....
but what is good urban form ?
by Wayne A. Benjamin
B. Arch., City College of New York, 1980
B.S. Arch. Technology, New York Institute of Technology, 1979
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degrees of
MASTER OF CITY PLANNING and
MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ARCHITECTURE STUDIES
at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Signature of Author
School of Ar hit cture and Planning
May 20, 1983
Certified by
____________________
_____
Gary A. Hack
Thesis Advisor
-A______
Accepted by________________
Donald Schon, Chairman,
~
Department of Urban Studies & Planning
Graduate Student Committee
Wayne A. Benjamin
N4 John Hal S.ke , Chairman,
rtment of Architecture
Graduate Student Conmittee
1983
The author hereby grants to M.I.T. permission to reproduce and to distribute
publicly copies of this thesis doucment in whole or in part.
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...
but what is good urban form ?
by Wayne A. Benjamin
Thesis Supervisor
Gary A. Hack, Phd
Title :
Associate Professor of
Urban Studies and Planning
Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies
and Planning on May 20, 1983, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degrees of MASTER OF
CITY PLANNING and MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ARCHITECTURE
STUDIES.
ABSTRACT
This thesis takes a look at the evolution of
urban design ideas - Schools of Thought, as we
will refer to them - in New York City over
the last two decades. The transformation of
the " image of the good city " from the Modernist's
sleek, abstract, and minimalist towers-in-parks
to a lessvisionary, people and street centered
urban fabric is the focus of this evolution. The
state of the art in urban design resulting from
the experiences of the last two decades is taken
as the position from which we begin to answer the
question,
abstract
...
but what is
good urban form
?
Three themes are woven together; 1 Good urban form
is essentially a question of a good public
environment, ie. the street, 2 Building activity
needs to recognize and relate to the setting or
" context " in which it occurs, context- sensitivity
being an essential urban form consideration,
3 Building regulations such as zoning have been
recognized as design tools, an innovative or
sophisticated approach to their use is a possible
way to promote/achieve an improved urban environment.
iii
MY THANKS TO:
My family and friends for support
and encouragement
Tunney Lee for our countless discussions
on urban and environmental design and
this thesis
Christine Cousineau for dedicated and
indepth comments on this doucment
John DeMonchaux for crisp, to the point
observations on the central themes of
this thesis
Donald Schon for helping me to " reflect
on my arguements
acknowledgements
Gary Hack for urging me to " telegraph
what is going to be said, say it, and
then say it again "
iv
PROLOGUE
INTRODUCTION
FRAMEWORK :
ZONING AS A DESIGN TOOL
THE SOCIAL CRITICS OF CITY PLANNING
THE STREET AS PLACE
GOOD URBAN FOR4
IS...
THE U.D.C.
52
BATTERY PARK CITY
table of contents
42 nd STREET REDEVELOPMENT
115
CONCLUSIONS
142
BIBLIOGRAPHY
155
This thesis is both a story and a story
about a story. The story is told in the
Framework section of the thesis. It is
essentially a declaration of principles
on urban design; what it needs to
recognize and respond to. The story
about a story unfolds around the two
case studies used in this thesis, the
Battery Park City landfill development
and the Times Square/42nd Street Redevelopment, both in New York City. Through them
the evolution of schools of thought
in
urban design and city planning can be
seen. This evolution of urban design
philosophy in N.Y.C., the story about a
story, is also the foundation for the
story told in the Framework; its principles
growing out of the experience which the
prologue
case studies document.
The Cooper/Eckstut plans for Battery
Park City and the Times Square Redevelopment,
1979 and 1981 respectively, are taken as
examples of the state-of-the-art in
urban design and it is argued that they
have a positive urban vision and that
they represent appropiate approaches
towards intervention in the urban
environment. The four Battery Park City
plans which precede the Cooper/Eckstut
plan illustrate a movement away from the
Modern Movement's view of the city
to a context-sensitive urban design ethic,
from the sleek, abstract, simple city to
a rediscovery of the phenomena of the city
experience and the street as the heart
of the urban environment. It is from this
position that the Framework/manifesto
is written and from which the succession
of proposals for Battery Park City will
vii
be critiqued.
The focus of
"
...
but what is good
urban form?" is the evolution of the image
of the " good city " from one school of
thought to another; Modernist to a
Jacobs/Lynch, the major transitions
in this evolution , and the resulting
urban design ethic growing out of this
experience.
...
but what is good urban form ?
For most of its history, New York has carried
on a romantic, not to say intimate, involvement with congestion.
To be New York was to
be crowded - out of crowding came energy,
ideas, excitement, power.
If traffic was a
bit slower here than elsewhere, if tall buildings gave you less sun and sky than there
was in Des Moines or Dallas - well, who really
cared about moving fast once you were already
here?
And who came to New York in search of
sun and sky anyway?
Paul Goldberger
introduction
"The Limits of Urban Growth"
It goes without saying that the New York,
Manhattan to be precise, environment is dense
and despite its all too rational street pattern
life and activity on its streets is bustling,
at times hectic, rarely rational.
There is
something vibrant to be found in New York City.
Its people and form are flexible, they can adjust to a broad range of changes.
Change, those
who would change parts of the city, however
should not take this adaptability as license to
intervene, without careful thought and study,
in the urban environment.
The physical form of an urban environment is
the product of a dialogue between building and
context, object and subject.
The architecture
of a building, defined in a far too narrow
sense, is the product of the discourse between
internal form and internal use; internal as in
a logic specific to a building proposal such
as site, program, budget, users;
sense of "interior" space.
not in the
The architecture
of an urban fabric is the result of the architecture of buildings in dialogue with external
relations;
external meaning issues not imme-
diately part of the architectural program.
The external relations of a building is its
context.
Context is people, buildings, places,
character, image.
fic.
Context is location speci-
Ideally, the internal dialogues of archi-
tecture reach out to external relations, if
only limited to a degree.
An urban fabric,
and urban design, thus becomes a complex interaction of a series of three-way architectural
dialogues.
The internal discourse of the archi-
tecture of one building becomes the context external relations - of another.
It follows
that an architecture which is in dialogue with
its context is in communication with the forms
and activities which surround it.
This thesis asks "How does one build in a way
that is sensitive to context?;
indeed,
What
does it mean to be sensitive to context; What
does it mean to be sensitive to the crowding,
energy, ideas, excitement, and power of New
York City?"
It aims its questions particularly
at large-scale developments, because of their
ability to change their settings more than any
single conventional structure.
Two current
large-scale developments in the city, Battery
Park City (92 acres) and the Times Square/42nd
Street Redevelopment (13 acres), are employed
to illustrate possible answers and approaches.
In the two case studies, the use of design and
development guidelines are the focus of our
attention.
The 42nd Street case poses the
urban form question within
up urban fabric.
an existing, built-
The guidelines regulate not
only land-use and building location, but
5
building configuration and image as well, to
yield an integrated development of individual
structures, new and existing, without, indeed,
executing the redevelopment as a single architect/developer project.
The Battery Park City
case poses the urban form question in a situation where a major land-fill development is to
act as an addition to
an existing urban fabric.
Its guidelines seek to break down the "project"
into "nieghborhoods" and connect the land-fill
development with the street pattern of Lower
Manhattan.
In both cases it can be argued that good urban
form is essentially a good street/public environment resulting from a thoughtful design process.
In both cases the design process is
guided by design regulations as a way to promote
attention to the urban design issues each case
presents.
Throughout the thesis we will explore
the use of regulation as a design tool, its
evolution and current state in N.Y.C., and as
one way to achieve good urban form.
When we ask the question,
...
but what is good
urban form?, it must be recognized that the
definition of "the Good City" has changed over
time and indeed there have been and are multiple
rather than singular definitions of good urban
form.
The Beaux Arts "White City" and the
Modernist (C.I.A.M.) "Radiant City", as pure
types, espouse theories of good urban form
which are in conflict with one another.
So too
would an "organic model" of urban form conflict
with a "machine model" of urban form.
Clearly
our thinking about urban form and intervening
in it is in a constant state of change;
ideally
we learn from our experiences and adjust - change
our thinking in response.
As our conception of good urban form is transformed over time a period of transition results
whereby old and new ideas are in dialogue and
conflict.
Such a period is rich in information.
The Battery Park City case allows us an opportunity to examine one of these periods, the
late '60's/early '70's, via a progression of
plans for its development spanning over 17
years.
The 42nd Street case allows us to
examine where the experiences of this period
have brought us;
to the rediscovery of the
street as the essential unit of design in an
urban environment.
This thesis is divided into four major chapters:
Framework, The Battery Park Case, The
Times Square/42nd Street Redevelopment Case,
and Conclusions.
The Framework covers, the use of Zoning, that
is, built form regulations, As An Urban Design
Tool and as an indication of the essential
urban form issues-of-the-day which the various
zoning ordinances were legislated to address;
The Social Critics of City Planning, essentially a look at cities from a non-formal perspective;
The Street As Place, an argument
for the importance of the street to the urban
environment;
Good Urban Form Is
...
,
an en-
capsulation of an urban design ethic, and
The U.D.C., a look at the powerful development
agency controlling the development of the two
interventions used as case studies in this
thesis.
The case study chapters present a
body of information on the current state of
urban design thinking about the perception/conception and execution of large-scale urban
planning and design efforts.
we reflect on the
In the Conclusions,
meaning of ,the changes
in the defination of good urban form exhibited
in the case study plans.
8.1
framework
In Urban Design as Public Policy (Architectural Record Books, 1974)
Jonathan Barnett
asked the question "If a city can get the
buildings it asks for, why can't it get the
buildings it wants? ...
while it is easy to
blame greedy real-estate developers for row
after row of "ticky-tacky" look-alike houses,
in many cases the combination of street grid
and zoning setback lines has left the builder
no alternative ...
(if) you find the skyline
of the average American city to be full of
unimaginative boxy buildings, the combination
of zoning rules and street grid must, again,
bear at least part of the blame".
Zoning regulations are taken for granted, so
much so that their utility can be ignored.
They are not however a natural working of the
market system, but an imposition on it, in-
zoning
as a design tool
tended to protect public health and safety
in
addition to private property values through
the control of built form.
Zoning today limits or structures what can be
designed and built.
It has been and remains
as the most versatile tool of urban designers
in New York since Barnett and company took a
close look at who and what exercise the greatest influence over the form of a city.
New York City has used zoning regulations in
1916,1961, and 1967 to control the form of
buildings in light of broader, city wide
considerations. The ordinances espouse at
least mid-level theories of good urban form;
there is an image of the city they seek to
achieve. An examination of these ordinances
is due because of the potential such
regulations to achieve a new urban vision and
because the ordinances and their related views
of the good city relate to the evolving urban
design ethic explored in the csae studies.
The 1916 Zoning Ordinance was in reaction to
Studies by Hugh Ferriss showing building
masses are "carved" out of the zoning
setback lines of New York City's 1916
ordinance.
the laissez-faire role of public authority
on private development.
Its regulations sought
12
to protect both private property heights
and the public's right to light and air;
buildings were held to the street - their
mass carved by height and setback requirements.
The "public interest" was served by
countering the increasingly canyon-like
pattern of development Manhattan was experiencing;
the Equitable Building, 1915, being
the quintessential example of this - its footprint covering in excess of 90% of its site,
and bulk rising in an uninterrupted line from
street to roof 36 stories above.
The Equitable building was not an isolated
event but a symbol of a building and "type",
the pure block, and it was this building
The second Equitable Life Assurance
Building, 1915, violates the bulk that was a
year later allowed to the site by the zoning
ordinance of 1916. The solid-line outline is the
building as built;
type which the 1916 ordinance rejects in
favor of the integrated block and tower; Cass
Gilbert's Woolworth Building,
by Stephen Zoll in
1913, being cited
Space and Society # 18 as an
"ideal" model of this type.
Already,
we can begin to see the link between
design and regulation.
However in the early
1900's it was design which influenced regulation.
A choice was made between the two pre-
dominant high-rise building types and legislation written to encourage the desired type.
In turn, regulation influenced the form of
future design.
The same scenario can be
written about the 1960 resolution.
The tower/
plaza relationship exhibited by the Seagram
Building,
1957,
was adopted as the new desired
"type", and then regulation was effected to
promote design in this direction.
Design in-
fluences and is influenced by regulation.
The close conformity of the Woolworth
Building, 1913, with the zoning envelope
(represented by the volume shaded gray),
shows the use of this building as a model for
the zoning legislation of 1916.
The 1916 ordinance was a first step in the
regulation of built form in the city.
The
actual bulk Qf buildings however was not
directly addressed.
Granted, the tower sec-
tion of a building could not exceed 25% of
its site, but this meant that the larger the
site, the larger the tower could be.
In
addition the lower, non-tower floors were
left free to, potentially, cover the entire
site.
As development in the city continued
under the ordinance, its limits were pushed;
buildings literally filled the maximum zoning
envelope, resulting in dense and overbuilt
streets.
In the space of two decades, five proposals
were made to limit the bulk which buildings
in N.Y.C. could achieve, residential as well
as commercial;
1936
Regional Plan Association,
Information Bulletin No. 20, Zoning Revision
to Limit the Bulk of Buildings Proposed for
New York City Business Districts
1939
N.Y.C. City Planning Commission,
Rexford Tugwell, Commissioner, Minutes,
Meeting of May 3, 1939
1944
N.Y.C. Planning Commission,
Robert Moses, Commissioner, Report on the
Amendment of the Zoning Resolution
Tho w"
1950
ad anoomuliss Sulb
Harrison, Ballard and Allen,
Plan for Re-Zoning the City of New York
woeen
are inee WIVu.
IL
fiene.
mose
TA
TA.
54
tr" is
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This is
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Voorhees, Walker, Smith and Smith,
Zoning New York City.
pro-
A FAR *I Me eA
(Mam.Juy '58).
All plans, with the exception of the 1958
one, were defeated.
The Voorhees, Walker,
Smith and Smith proposal became the base
Il
new zoning of 1961.
f.
omo
"a" .5 om.5.ie beek oud
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diren
left).
The 1961 Comprehensive Revision of N.Y.C.'s
a...,.
hit"an
4.
zoning was a major step in the City's use of
zoning as an urban design tool, a step further developed in 1967 with Special Design
spouse
opas. by J00. he. dievd.. bh shoS
This reti.
bu.. 0 . an
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idshi. it.
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Agured by astiepire Lo area a/ ope
Open
ene
ment
ioewver.
ar-a
(ONS.
Districts.
abhe
ease
Instead of working in a restric-
tive manner, zoning was asked to encourage,
Lhe
pr-
e
via "incentive" bulk bonuses to developers,
a new building type.
A developer could
achieve up to a 20% increase in FAR, a device
introduced by the '61 resolution to set a bulk
limit/gross floor area buildable on a specific
site in any given zoning district, contingent
upon the provision of public plaza space.
Later covered, i.e. interior galleria, were
also allowed.
Four years after the '61 revi-
sion, John Lindsay was elected Mayor of N.Y.C.
"New York was a glorious place to live in 1965
anything seemed possible, even the purification
of the air and the reconstruction of vast deterioration ...
it wasn't completely ludicrous
to refer to New York as Fun City
The Seagram Building, 1957, shows,
against the legal zoning bulk envelope for the
site, just what the building gave up of its
allowed bulk in order to achieve its design.
...
(Lindsay)
was elected because of a wide-spread optimism
about the city's future as a place to live
IS. Zoll et all".
It is from this spirit of
optimism that Special Design Districts evolved.
Special Design Districts are a product of the
-
Urban Design Group.
The Urban Design Group
was established, circa 1967, as a force within
the City Planning Commission in response to
the Paley Report, (The Threatened City), a
document issued in '67 by a twelve-man committee appointed by Mayor Lindsay to study urban
design in N.Y.C.
Two major observations of
the report were:
1)
47'
the City's ability to control both public
and private design under the current zoning
Y
law and, 2) "...The City's endless process of
redevelopment was conceived piecemeal, a
building at a time, and lost valuable opportunities to coordinate, through design, an
increased ease of use and style of place."
In recognition of these points, the Urban
Design Group used the influence which the
03
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zoning law allowed the city, the granting or
withholding of bonus FAR, as their principal
bargaining tool with developers to get desired
public amenities.
Special Design Districts set forth urban design
objectives for a part of the city in zoning
language. The five most important such districts
in NY.C. are, in chronological order:
the
Theatre District, Lincoln Square, the Fifth
Avenue District, Greenwich Street, and the
Lower Manhattan Districts.
In each, zoning
regulations were recognized as both part of
the urban design problem (i.e. the zoned/
segregation of land uses usually associated
with zoning is counterproductive in complex
and diverse urban areas),
and solution. In
the special districts, zoning was explicitly
used as a design and negotiation tool.
U
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ti
L
The Lincoln Square Special Zoning
District shapes private development in the
area surrounding the Lincoln Center for
the Performing Arts.
"In
each of the special districts, individual
proposals had signaled the need to reconsider
land-use controls for a particular area, and
negoti.ations with a developer were used as a
W
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test case for the new controls.
FIij
MLIZ-1
The intent
was to create an improved set of regulations
which would operate without additional new
legislation and would require the minimum of
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Intro to Urban Design]."
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in the Greenwich Street
District.
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7
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The 1916 ordinance by-no means solved all of
the city s planning problems.
The zoning districts adopted for the lower
Manhattan perimeter required that visual
corridors not only be left open but defined
by new construction, through the use of
"build-to" lines.
It allowed the
construction of tenement buildings with poor
light conditions and segregated land uses
into near mono-functional districts with the
result being parts of the city which are
vibrant and others which close down after
business hours.
The urban fabric continued
It,
to be developed both higher and denser.
therefore, was not unreasonable for the '61
revision to provide a mechanism, such as
negotiable zoning, for the relief of congestion and excessively crowded streets.
The
plazas provided by incentive zoning developments or the quais-public gallerias can
potentially be enjoyable urban amenities.
However the '61 revision provided no means
of "placing" such amenities where they are
needed, other than confining their use to a
district;
however district boundaries too
became negotiable.
The promise and problem of negotiable zoning
as a design tool on a city wide basis is that
it provides or allows random or accidental
yet intentional development.
As mentioned
previously, much of a building's form in N.Y.C.
is determined by the zoning regulations it is
subject to.
In this respect, the building is
the product of the intent of zoning - what
the city asked for.
However the particulars
of a building - the client, the program, the
architect, the degree to which it simply conforms to the zoning requirements or pushes
their limits or tries to get around them, its
site, the fit with its context, are all fairly
random.
There was no way to place a single
open space in an area via incentive zoning
without opening the possibility of 6th Avenue,
that is a proliferation of so-called plazas
in series, providing little more than expanded
sidewalk without a further level of development
and identity.
The Seagram Building may have
been the model for the '61 resolutions building/
plaza relationship and its intent, but the
accident of 6th Avenue - half a dozen Seagram
Buildings with their plazas unboond - is also
within the possible outcomes of the translation of this desired outcome into zoning law.
The formal coherence of development which resulted from the 1916 ordinance, though admittedly too bulky when it filled the maximum
zoning envelope, was eroded by the 1961
resolution, which could be argued to have been
at odds with the context it was proposed for.
In adopting the Seagram Building as a prototype, the assumptions about good city form
it held seem to be " ...
based upon the
'revolutionary' concepts of architecture expounded by LeCorbusier and others during the
Nineteen-twenties.
Their vision of the city
of the future as a series of towers set in
parkland does not seem to be adaptable to
implementation on a lot-by-lot basis [Barnett,
1974 etc.]."
In effect the layering of the
3
2
5
0
Stages in the development of the tall
building in New York.
1. First
Equitable Life Bldg.. 1870. lock
Second Equitable Life Bldg., 1915. tall lock
Netropolitan Life Bldg.. 1890, lock
Singer Bldg., 1899, hkick
.itro)olitan Life with tower, 1909. block with .lddi tower
Siger Bldg. with tower, 190 , block with added lower
WIoIworti Bldg., 1913, initerated block awd tower
. Seagiami Bldg., 1957. tower
9. U.S. Steel BIg., 1972, slab or tIll bilck
2.
3.
4.
.5.
6.
7.
9
modernist ethic over the existing city
fabric produced built events in which new
buildings pulled away from old ones, standing
isolated in their plaza/parkland waiting for
more towers in a park to connect to, an impure version of the modernist city waiting to
grow.
i.s,
If the obstacles in this new city, that
the current city, could be cleanly and
quickly removed then a Corbusian future may be
at hand, but it may well be without the
potential for an active and human public environment the current city possesses.
The
current use of streets, definition of turf,
and associated expectations/meaning of life
in an urban environment may well be lost.
Questions of good urban fQrm are an ideological
discourse between problems of spatial form, the
production of spatial form, and the society
which produces spatial form.
Spatial form
doesn't exist in and of itself or for itself.
It is a product of economic, political, social
and ideological structures interacting.
There
is a social base to the question of good urban
form, rooted in the experience -and groups with city form.
of individuals
In the next section
of this chapter we look at the criticisms of
city planning with respect to this view of the
city as more than a formal exercise.
the social critics of city planning
, FIG.
3$.
Tb
Bosso. image as deried from
verbal interviews
e-~~
S
FIG. 36.
4b
FIG.
37.
Tb. dismcswe
#lemeus of Baslos
.
VI
The Boston image a dArived from shetch maps
The critics of city planning who emerged in
the 1960's focused their attention on the
social phenomena and networking which define
and energize neighborhoods and communities.
They noted city planning/planner's insensitivity
to such matters.
The human qualities of place
street, and city need to inform city planning
and design, and should be translated into requirements/goals for the planning process.
In the 1950's Boston's city planners took a
look at the city's West End and saw a slum:
density was too high, physical condition of the
housing stock was below their standards, open
space was lacking.
The West End was leveled
and the new vision of the good city erected,
highrise buildings sitting in open space contained.
As the West End neared death
Herbert Gans took a look at this "slum" and
saw a viable community.
The residents of this
urban village had a way of life and a vitality
which simply didn't register with the city's
planners.
The social grouping and community
institutions - church, school, social, civic
and political organizations, commercial establishments, shopping streets, etc., which
Gans saw mean as much to community as the
physical condition of housing and proximity
to open space, if not more so.
We view the
West End as an example of city planning at
its least sensitive to the social base of
urban form.
Jane Jacobs, in her poetic ballet-of-theThe district, and indeed as many of its
internal parts as possible, irnist serve more than one primary
function; preferably more than two. These mst insure the
presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules
and are in the place for different purposes, but who are
able to use many facilitiesin connnon.
CONDITION
I:
street analysis of New York's Greenwich
Village addressed similar issues as did
Gans, and actually Jacob's Death and Life
of American Cities
was published in 1961,
four years before Gan's The Urban Villagers
recounted the West End saga.
The Village
Most blocks mst be short; that is, streets
and opportunitiesto turn corners vmst be frequent.
CONDITION
2:
fortunately did not suffer the fate of the
She brought to our attention the
West End.
phenomena of neighborhood, the activities of
people preparing for the day and their use of
3: The district must mingle buildings that
-vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of
old ones.
CONDITION
the street.
The city, Jacobs contended, is a
work of life, not a work of art.
In her pre-
scription for what ails city planning and
development, Jacobs made reference to diversity of land-use, street and block system,
4: The district imst have a sufficiently dense
concentration of people, for whatever purpose they may
be there. This includes people there because of residence.
CONDITION
and building-street relationship --
all
easily within the province of the urban
designer to understand, observe, manipulate
- Jacobs
or leave alone.
In books from Image of the City to Site
Planning
to Theory of Good City Form, Kevin
Lynch has continued to call for sensitivity
in urban planning and design to human needs
and qualities in urban form.
experience,
he contends,
The human
should be the central
33
consideration.
Recently, he has proposed
five dimensions of performance and two metacriteria by which the quality of spatial form
can be measured for the humanness of its
making.
"1)
They are:
Vitality - the degree to which the form
of the settlement supports the vital functions
the biological requirements and capabilities
of human beings
2)
Sense
...
,
the degree to which the settlemnt
can be clearly perceived and mentally differentiated and structured in time and space by
its residents and the degree to which that
mental structure connects with their values,
and concepts - the match between environment,
our sensory and mental capabilities, and our
cultural constructs,
3)
Fit - the degree to which the form and
capacity of spaces, channels, and equipment
in a settlement match the pattern and quality
of actions that people customarily engage in,
or want to engage in - that is, the adequacy
of the behavior settings, including their
adaptability to future actions,
4)
Access - the ability to reach other per-
sons, activities, resources, information,
services, or places, including the quality
and diversity of elements which can be
reached,
5)
Control
-
the degree to which the use and
access to spaces and activities, and their
creation, repair, modification, and management are contrQlled by those who use, work,
Qr reside in them,
6)
in
Efficiency
-
(a meta-criteria) the cost,
terms of other valued things, of creating
and maintaining the settlement, for any given
level of attainment of the environmental
dimensions listed above,
7)
Justice
-
(a meta-criteria) the way in
which the environmental benefits and costs
are distributed among persons according to
some particular principle such as equity,
need, intrinsic worth, ability to pay, effort
expanded, potential contribution, or power
[K. Lynch, Theory of Good City Form, M.I.T.
Press 1982]."
Lynch's Performance Dimensions take us from
a social criticism of city planning to a precription for evaluating urban form in social
and human terms.
From them, particularly
Sense, Fit and Access, we can generate a set
of questions to ask of the urban form proposed in the two case studied.
1.
What is the primary public, people-
centered environment?
public places?
What/Where are the
2.
What is the role of Streets?
they used?
3.
What is
How are
How are they detailed?
the relationship between building
and building, building and street, building
and person?
4.
What function does existing development
and pattern have in the generation of form
for the new development?
Questions 1 and 2 draw upon a streets-as-themeasure-of-good-form theme, while 3 and 4
are questions exploring urban fabric/pattern
issues and the relationship of building to
place to pattern.
The four questions will be
invoked recurrently as a running dialogue
throughout the two case studies.
The theme which questions 1 and 2 explore
will be further elaborated upon in the
following section, The Street As Place.
In
so doing, our social critique of physical
form planning which has moved to method of
evaluating the socialness/humanness of
physical form takes yet another step in exploring the interaction of form and human
response.
Streets in cities serve many purposes besides carrying vehicles,
and city sidewalks-the pedestrian parts of the streets-serve
many purposes besides carrying pedestrians. These uses are bound
up with circulation but are not identical with it and in their own
right they are at least as basic as circulation to the proper workings of cities.
A city sidewalk by itself is nothing. It is an abstraction. It
means something only_in.-conjuctioni vith the buildings and
other sesbat border it, or border other sidewalks very near it.
The same might be said of streets, in the sense that they serve
other purposes besides carrying wheeled traffic in their middles.
Strects and their sidewalks, the main public places of a city, are
its most vital orgins. Think of a city and what comes to mind?
Its streets. If a city's streets look interesting, the city looks interesting; if the) look dull, the city looks dull.
The Battery Park City and 42nd Street cases
both accept the street as an integral part of
their developments.
In the former, the street
gives order to a tabula rasa site, in the
latter it provides a means to hold together
existing and proposed new development.
In
both cases Street is given its traditional
form:
a mono-level circulation and communi-
cation artifact.
This is in contrast to
projects which create interior realm and leave
the street's function unaddressed - such as
the 1969 plan for Battery Park City - or seek
to separate pedestrians and the auto into
their own mutually exclusive zones.
The street, the most public of public spaces,
is a mixed bag of stimuli, possessing varied
the street
as place
and possibly conflicting meanings.
This makes
the partial rejection of the street by planners
and critics easy to understand and the necessity
of its acceptance
seems all the more
important.
When we speak of the rejection of the street,
as in the traffic-free super-blocks of a
Garden City or the self-contained, inwardlooking Modern Movement projects such as
the Prudential Center in Boston, we mean the
cognitive
omission of it as a place for
human activities.
in nature.
Street,
after all is
plural
"Part of the nature of a street is
that it serves as a physical connector, a link,
among various places.
street's
nature is
Another part of a
that it
is
link, more than simply a path.
more than just a
A street is
framed and influenced by that which it passes
through and modifies its
to the aforementioned
[W.
character in response
Benjamin and 0. Cana-
lis, "A Street in Depth: the Via Raffaello Reformatorio Link"
Architecture]."
ILAUD '81, Language of
40
Street, seen in this fuller sense, is place
as well as link.
It is an urban element
interactive with its context.
"We thus
define "street" as an element within the
larger, three-dimensional communication
artifact called the city:
an element which,
in being both place and link, supports movement, access, and local activity, an element
which can serve in radically different ways
as its public use boundaries refine the
meaning and location of public and private
places and activities [S. Anderson Streets
Phases 1-2, Institute for Architecture and
Urban Studies]."
The rejection of street-as-place by planners
when rebuilding parts of the city leaves us
with street-as-link.
It leaves us with a
mono-dimensional element whose sole function
is movement;
thus the design of street
becomes a technical exercise in efficiently
accommodating traffic.
Supporting human
activities is left to the private realm; the
public realm -
the street - at best provides
access to the private.
We lose both a unique
institution and the heart of an urban environment. Let us not, however, romanticise the
street.
Its reality and connotations: to be
put on the street, mean-streets, street
people, street life, etc., can be harsh. But
likewise and conversely, the connotations of
a street fair, streetscape, stoops, a cafe,
a promenade,
are all positive.
The existence
of such opposite interpretations/uses of
streets are an indication of the interplay
between the physical environment and human
behavior.
One sees physical form, be it a
car or a street, from a subjective position
of expectations and experiences, financial
and psychological security, health, age, race,
gender, et al.
Who we are affects how we
interact with the street.
Two people can
feel quite differently about the same street.
Anderson, in Streets Phases 1-2, defines
three levels of physical environment and
speaks to the fit between physical form and
its meaning.
The levels are: the potential
environment, the affective environment, and
the latent environment.
vironment
The potential en-
is the physical environment, an
environment created and altered only via
physical form manipulation, a forum for
human activities.
The affective environment
is "that version of the potential environment that is manifestly or implicitly
adopted by users;
the societal conception
of the man-made environment
tential environment ...
user,
...
(the) po-
reinterpreted by each
thus yielding his subjective environment
43
Within the same physical place, different
individuals have different affective environments
[Anderson
Streets
...
]."
The affec-
tive environment, the subjective environment
which can see mean streets or streets paved
with gold in the same place, can change without physical form manipulation, a changed
attitude is all that is required.
environment
The latent
is "those aspects of the poten-
tial environment that are not assimilated by
society (unrealized potential, if you will).
"Latency" in the environment allows for
societal change without physical change.
Latency can be increased (or decreased) by
physical change [Anderson
Streets
...
I."
Place, drawing upon the above definitions of
environment, comes into being when an actor(s)
is put in a physical setting.
What one does
in "Place" is framed by perception of place
which is in turn framed by a broader societal
perception of place and the rules which should
govern it.
Multiple actors yield multiple
affective environments of a single potential
environment, implying a socio-physical interdependency of man and form, but in a nondeterministic manner, given multiple rather
than singular perceptions of place.
"Multiple
affective environments imply no strict relationship, but rather a loose fit
among
physical form (potential environment),
meaning.
use and
Within this loose fit, whatever is
not realized in the affective environment is
an "unrealized potential" of the environment
in relation to society ...
ment [Anderson
Streets
...
the latent environet al]."
Place,
to be versatile and flexible, needs to be
designed for a broad possibility of activities.
The street needs to be the primary public
environment, recognized as possessed with
45
a broad range of potential and affective
environments, lending to a better fit with
more of the needs of users than a less
diverse public setting.
In both the 42nd Street and Battery Park
developments, the street is the primary focus
activity.
The proposed potential environments
are similar to those possessed by the City in
general;
i.e.
private bounded by public,
street framed by building, street forming a
matrix of settings.
The potential environment
of a shopping mall or incentive zoning amenity
galleria are of a different nature.
First,
the latency in the environment would no doubt
be decreased due to "management's" imposition
Qf its restrictions upon those of society.
Second, these potential environments would
close, unlike a street. Third, an increased
sense of private rather than public space may
46
arise from being enclosed affecting one's
perception of place and thus one's affective
environment.
To be good, urban form needs to exploit the
publicness that streets afford.
The amenities
brought to the urban environment via incentive
zoning have not always lived up to their
promise.
The CitiCorp Center may well be an
asset to midtown, though it is far too inward
looking, as the branch of the Bronx Botanical
Garden at the 1BM Tower
should prove to be,
but many of the interior public spaces, like
that of the Olympic Tower (and there is a
growing matrix of such galleria amenities in
the East 50's,
brought on by the office
building boom)
are, at best, grand corridors
from one street to another, offering little
activity.
Life has come to such spaces by
means of private concessions;
salad bars,
47
croissant shops, et al.,
supposed public place.
leased
in this
As a result the
author's perception upon entering is similar
to entering a private eating establishment.
As public potential environments these
amenities must take a back seat to the street;
while a galleria amenity holds the activity
generated by private concessions, cafes,
shops, pedestrian movement et al.,
interior of a building,
to the
the street allows such
activity to be visible and to animate the
public realm.
The general point to be drawn from this glance
at the study of streets is that the physical
environment is
interactive with human behavior.
We are not disinterested about where we live
and work.
The potential environments with
which we interact help shape our attitude
about the city and the quality of life it
offers.
The physical matters.
Community exists in a
physical as well as cultural context.
Street
needs to be understood as an element in the
socio-physical construct known as City;
sensitivity to the quality and use of its context is essential.
The distinctions between
contextual design as a style and as a process
will be discussed in greater depth in the
42nd Street case.
The concept of contextualism
has already been introduced as the external
relations which the internal form and use
dialogues of architecture reach out to yield
urban design.
Street and context form the
network of public places which are the setting
for human activities.
We've looked at zoning as a means to make
physical form development conform with ideas
of good urban form;
in the next section,
the implementation of regulations to this end,
via a development agency, will be discussed.
Physical form as a social act, interactive
with human behavior has also been reviewed.
Where has this brought us?
to the question,
...
form, we can reply:
Now, in response
but What is good urban
an urban fabric which
directly attends to the issues of
livability
...
encourages public places and
a public life (and) also creates a setting
which is more meaningful to the individual
inhabitant and small groups ID. Appleyard &
A. Jacobs "Towards an Urban Design Manifesto"
U.C. Berkeley March 1980]."
Such an environ-
ment should emphasize the human experience of
good urban form is...
the city;
its sights, smells, sounds,glamour,
grit, feel, moods, features, places, and
people.
Multiple values and priorities must
be taken into account.
The good city must
offer its best to all.
Streets need to be
recognized as valuable assets.
The professional and layperson must read and
critique the city as a city;
not a medieval
hill town, a village, a suburb, a garden, or
utopia.
In a city people live and work in
close proximity.
City implies some degree
of density though this need not be taken to
extremes.
"Density of people alone will ac-
count for the existence or non-existence of
certain uses and services we find important
to urban life. (T)he number and diversity of
small stores and services - say groceries,
bars, bakeries, laundries and cleaners,
coffee shops, second-hand stores, and the
like - that will be found in a city or area
is in part a function of density.
The via-
bility of mass transit ...
is in part depen-
dent on the density of residential areas, and
in part on the size and intensity of commercial and service destinations [Appleyard &
Jacobs "Towards a ..."]."
Good urban form must be communication with
the forms and uses of the city.
It must
respond to the urban life that urban residents
seek.
It will not satisfy all, no place does.
The good life, like good urban form, is a
plural concept.
Thus city planning and design
need concern itself with promoting the good
urban
life, understanding that urban life is
not suburban life is not rural life.
To the professional practitioner having a
theory of good urban form is not enough,
answering the question, ...
urban form?
but what is good
is only a first step.
There
needs to be a way to achieve the vision of
good form.
Zoning, conventional -
incentive
special design - we have shown, is one such
implementation tool. It has had the problem
of being unable to address specific urban
design issues without having the intent of
building regulations twisted.
Urban renewal is another implementation tool
by which a city can obtain land through compulsory purchase, demolish buildings, adjust
the cost of land to make desirable development which the city may want to occur, and
set what ever conditions it deems necessary
the u.d.c.
to the sale of land.
In practice urban re-
newal has been abused, in theory it is a
-
useful tool.
The design guidelines for Battery Park City
and the Times Square Redevelopment are a
combination of special urban design districtlike zoning used in the legal framework of
city power and control afforded by urban
renewal.
The New York State Urban Develop-
ment entity,
has used its
urban renewalpowers
to package the development guidelines in both
of our case studies.
The degree of site and
form-specific regulation exhibited by the
guidelines is both bolder and more explicit
in
intent than anything the city has attempted
in the past in a similar vein.
Since the 1916 zoning ordiance, building form
regulations have been legally bound to be
equitable, every property owner in a district
had the same development rights.
Today,
guidelines are used when a greater degree of
explicitness and public control of private
development is desired.
In the two case studies "the urban design
controls are a paradoxical combination of
complete discretionary authority expressed as
explicity,
and apparently unchangeable, series
of building descriptions [Barnett ...
Urban Design]."
Intro to
They use zoning within an
urban renewal context - with which the UDC has
been well-equipped to operate.
One of the many semi-autonomous state agencies
spawned by the Rockefeller era in the Empire
State,
initially
the UDC is
a super urban-renewal agency
headed by urban renewal czar Ed ILogue.
With the powers granted it by the State Legislature the UDC can in theory, and in essence,
operate outside of a city's
building regulations
55
and approval process.
THE ROLE OF CITY PLANNING
IN MCUNICIPAL GO.ERNMENT
It is an extreme or
aggressive form of planning as-an-activityof-a-planning-commission, outside of the
1. AN INDIPENDENT ACTNIT'
mainstream of political activity and is one
OF Tu
UTY-PEANNINGCONt0U0IO
possible answer to the question "Where should/
DE.P4fTh4ENTI
does planning occur?" -
as an independent
COUNCIL
-
DEPAETMdEN1I
EXECL-TIVE
.A
AND OrHES,
STAF
4s
activity of a planning commission, by an aide
STAF* UlDE TO
TfHECIFF EXECLTMI
to the Chief Executive, as a policy-making
TMENTS
DEPAR
activity of the city council.
AND
COMMIcOUTEE
IC
OTHER-UMMISSIONS
A KoiJCNt.A11'E.
ACTETh
Ti.E
No
anEEL
N
E
A look at the abilities of the UDC, the means
used to control physical form development and
promote a vision of the city, is in order.
"The formidable powers of the (UDC) are described in broadly inclusive, positive, and
permissive terms.
demn,
.. .
There is the power to con-
to clear land and to relocate displacees
UDC,
its
lessees and successors
in interest
are specifically exempted from municipal permitgranting powers and certificates of occupancy
56
(it is) authorize(d) ...
to waive local laws,
ordinances, zoning codes, charters and construction regulations,
substituting
compliance
with the state's own building construction
code 'when, in the discretion of the corporation ...
compliance is not feasible or prac-
ticable'... UDC and its subsidiaries are
granted exemption from local property taxes
on value added after acquisition
(it can)
...
create limited profit subsidary corporations,
enter into contracts for purchase, lease,sale
or mortgage property, promulgate regulations,
and issue general revenue, or project-secured
bonds and notes [W.K. Reilly & S.J. Schulman,
"The State Urban Development Corporation: New
York's Innovation"
The Urban Lawyer
1969, American Bar Association]."
nism,
however,
Summer
No mecha-
was provided to write-down land
cost, a familiar and useful renewal tool, or
provide housing subsidies beyond those which
57
existed.
The point of all this is that the UDC is
capable of executing any and all of the tasks
associated with urban land development.
It
can legally require the urban form under its
jurisdiction to be manipulated in specific
ways, in compliance with the corporation's
goals.
The site specificity of the Battery
Park City and 42nd Street design guidelines
are an example of this.
It seems ironic that the chosen, and assumed
most effective and flexible, way for the City
to address the issues presented in these two
large-scale developments is to step outside
of the structure of city government.
As
Rockefeller was pushing the UDC legislation
through the State government, opposition to
it on the grounds of home-rule and municipal
integrity came from many directions, including the city government.
Then Mayor John
Lindsay was quoted in the N.Y. Times
(which
was also opposed to the legislation) of
April 12, 1969, as follows:
"At a time when
we are trying to make democracy work in the
streets of our cities, the legislature has
decided that the answer is greater, more
distant authority.
That, in my judgment is
asking for trouble [Urban Lawyer, etc.]."
Today, the City makes use of this greater
and more distant authority to give itself a
streamlined development process/mechanism.
A last note on the UDC would be a mention of
its accomplishments to date and commitment to
quality architecture and environments.
the scope of its
great importance.
Given
work the quality of it assumes
In
addition to Battery Park
City and the 42nd Street Redevelopment, the
Urban Development Corporation:
ARange of Projects
UDC has Roosevelt Island - a 2100 unit residential development between Manhattan and
The extent of U.D.C. assistance ranges from partial investing to the
lending of technical help. Figures for total value are estimated, inmillions
of dollars.
I
.
114NPROGR:ESS$
Project
New York Convention
and Exposition Center
42d Street redevelopment
Rochester Riverside
Convention Center
Facade Improvement
Farberware renovation
and expansion
Fordham Plaza
Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute (development of
high-technology center)
Federal Archives Building
conversion
Nettleton Shoe Company
renovation
South Street Seaport/
Schermerhorn Row
Queens - to its credit and had undertaken the
development of N.Y.C.'s $400 million convention
Total
Value
Location
$ 375.0*
1,000.0
West Side
Times Square
center
(Pei's design for it is reputed to be a
landmark for convention center design), due to
be completed in the mid-80's. "The UDC has ...
Rochester
Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn,
Nassau County, Buffalo
40.0
produced (in excess of) 34,000 units of housing
6.5
and other construction worth close to $300
18.0
45.0
South Bronx
Fordham (Bronx)
million.
Many of these projects have won
awards for design excellence;
Troy, N.Y.-
,
the corporation
65.0
received a 1974 A.I.A. citation as an outGreenwich Village
52.0
standing client.
One project, Metro North by
2.7
Syracuse
architects Conklin and Rossant scores highest
Lower Manhattan
115.5
in a New York City quality survey [Charles
Syracuse
Carrier Dome stadium
Midtown Manhattan
Grand Hyatt Hotel
Downtown Brooklyn
mail
Albee Squar* shopping
St. George Hot6l
renovation and corworslon Brooklyn Heights
Utica, N.Y.
Sheraton Motor inn
Original projection; cost has exceeded that figure
28.5
100.0
22.5
11.0
Hoyt, "Crisis in Housing:
What did the new
super-agency mean to the architect", Architectural Record Oct. 1975]."
In fact, the
7.5
number of UDC developments which have been
Source: UrbanDevelopment Corporefto
honored for their design and urban qualities
number over a dozen.
"The UDC has come in
for criticism by housing experts for its
insistence on thoughtful planning and fine
architectural design, showing a kind of
social recidivism
cost cutting.
garbed
in concern for
(It however) was able to
demonstrate that good architecture amortizes
in more than just the matter of revenue
return - that amortization consists also of
having a quality environment that can pull
people in, keep them there, and impel
community participation [William Marlin,
"After the Pitfall:
UDC Dusts off the Debris
of Default", Architectural Record Oct. 1975]."
Before we move on to the case studies, let's
restatate what has been said.
The question of good urban form is essentially
a question of a good public and street
environment.
Buildings, streets, and the
urban fabric respond to one another.
Urban form has a social base.
It is created
for and used by people, regardless of any
other singular issues which may claim to be
its cause.
It needs to respond to the
presence, activities, expectations, and
diversity of individuals and groups.
As one means of promoting urban form development to attend to the essential urban design
issues of the day,
regulations can be employed
and tailored to the problems at hand.
61.1
L.
-
-
F
-
/
2
*1
'4
battery park
city
New York Harbor
The history of Battery Park City goes back
almost two decades.
We can identify five
plans/schemes for the development
of a new
residential development on land-fill along
the western edge of Lower Manhattan.
Growth
via land-fill is not an alien idea to the
Lower Manhattan context.
Between 1650 and
the present,extensive landfill operations
have
1980 ------------1965 ------1800 -------
contributed 200 acres to the current
560 acre land area of Lower Manhattan.
With
reach of the five schemes the commitment to
1650 -------
this new community has held firm.
But for
nearly two decades the schemes for Battery
Park City have been just that - plans on
paper.
N
"Battery Park City is a paradox;
it occupies
one of the most spectacular and potentially
valuable sites in the world, yet it has been
unable to generate development activity.
63
(Since the early to mid '70's) its landfill
has stood substantially complete, but unused.
Rarely has such a development opportunity 92 acres of vacant land immediately adjacent
to downtown Manhattan - gone unheeded [Battery
Park City Draft Summary Report and 1979 Master
Plan, Cooper/Eckstut] ."
The 1979 Master Plan prepared by Cooper/Eckstut
Associates analyzes this paradox and seeks to
resolve it.
To put this plan in perspective
we take a look at the procession of Battery
Park City Plans which are the ancestors of the
1979 Plan.
As mentioned earlier, the four
questions developed in the Social Critics of
City Planning Section will be used to measure
the proposed urban environments of the five
plans.
64
PLAN 1 -
Sponsor:
1963
In 1963, the Downtown-Lower Manhattan
Downtown-Lower Manhattan
Association, Inc., chaired by David Rocke-
Association, Inc., Department
feller and having such members as AT & T,
of Marine & Aviation/S.O.M.,
Manufacturers Hanover Trust, the American
proposal
Stock Exchange, Consolidated Edison, The Wall
Street Journal, Irving Trust Co.,
First
National City Bank, and the Chase Manhattan
Bank, issued a report entitled Major Improvements;
Land Use, Transportation, Traffic -
Lower Manhattan.
Their planning consultants
were Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill.
The
Association contended "that commercial
occupancy of the greater part of Lower Manhattan
will represent the most logical and
economically sound use of the land in the
area, but that provision should be made for
as high a proportion of residential
65
occupancy as is consistent with this prinRECOMMENDED
MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS
ciple."
One such provision, consistent with
this principle, was the Hudson River Landfill
project;
a 65 acre proposal advanced by the
Department of Marine and Aviation, consisting
of six lateral commercial pier slips, a hotel,
4.5 million square feet of commercial space,
and 4500 apartments.
The Association found
the hotel and residential components of the
proposal "highly desirable" in that it would
stimulate more shopping outlets, service
facilities, and provide advantages for those
TRADE
WORLD
CENTER
B NEW YORK
STOCK EXCHANGE
*IvIC CENTER
1ROOKLYN BRIDGE
SOUTHWEST
WASHINGTON STREET
PECEvELOPMENT
* ELIPORT
MARINA AND
3A1 EL
AST RIVER
E5PLANADE
- ICS N "IVER
1 ANUOIL PROJECT
A
:
-
ROOILYN BRIDGE
-uTHEAST
kR-;CItN
%,RTH-
who work in the area.
Lower Manhattan as an
around-the-clock-living center for people was
the espoused goal.
The business-oriented Association, however,
BRIDGE
objected to the commercial piers as "inappropriate" and the commercial space as "unnecessary".
When this report was written Lower Manhattan had
66
witnessed the construction of "over 8 million
square feet of commercial space over the last
five years ...
since 1950 a total of 13.5
million square feet of office space (had) been
built or (was) under construction ...
Further,
some 16 million square feet, in existing
buildings had been modernized [Major Improvements: Land Use. Transportation, Traffic Lower Manhattan]."
Why were commercial piers
inappropriate or commercial space unnecessary
given this context?
One can only speculate
that whereas residential development on the
landfill site was an asset to the existing
commercial establishments, commercial development was strong competition.
In
any event,
the Association and their planning
consultants, S.O.M., did not discuss in any
detail how they envisioned the development of
the landfill project to proceed or what its
67
character would be, and why, when completed.
We have only a photo-montage in the report
of Lower Manhattan indicating
the Association's
recommended major improvements.
U
U
In it, there
appears to be no distinction between comercial
and residential development in terms of form,
scale,
or siting.
Though only a representation
of the development in gross terms, its intent,
appears clear - the landfill development formally is an island unto itself, isolated
towers sitting in
acres of space, corrnmunity de-
fined by project name.
This first
A(-l,_
TRADE
ERI
SENT
EXCHANGE
ST3CK
scheme for Battery Park City, not at
this point so named,
represents the very essence
of the Modern Movement's vision of the City.
CENTER
:1j1i
BROOKLYN
1RIDGE
D
SOUiTHWEST
E WASHINGTON STREET
REdEtCPMENT
P
~AN(V
ML
PROJECT
Zni!'
Its form is simple, sleek, abstract, and minimalist.
On its 65 acre site, a land area
rivaling the Wall Street Business District in
AN BRIDGE
-NT
ButiMEAST
,
%6I
I
"I
N BRIDGE
size, two basic building types rise above an
68
undifferentiated and unarticulated horizontal
plane which seems to innocently float on the
Hudson River, not really addressing Lower
Manhatton or the river.
The primary public environment,
is
the horizontal plane,
not.
we must assum,
the towers clearly are,
As a place-for-people, this vast flat
slab makes no provision for its use as such.
Where would one sit to eat lunch or stop to
talk?
Are there parks and plazas or is the
plane really monolithic?
What is the transi-
tion between public and private space?
Is
there Place or merely space?
The role of streets is simple, they have none
they do not exist, or at least none are indicated.
There is, in fact, no sense of connec-
tion, pedestrian or auto, between the new
development and the existing.
streets is
This lack of
consistent with the Modernist vision
-
69
of the City.
Towers were to sit in parkland,
expressways innocently roamed the parkland
giving access, a means to get from A to B,
but they were not to invade the Tower/Park
relationship.
An individual would feel lost in the urban
form this scheme proposes.- The open spaces
are, in general, the size of entire blocks
in Lower Manhattan.
Perhaps one such major
space would be useful, it would have to be
detailed, broken down.
What, however, would
over half a dozen major open spaces in series
be used for?
The size of the development allows the internal
dialogues of architecture to apparently reach
out to external relations without truly considering context.
The scheme, as a single
project, has an internal logic but not an
external one.
What is the edge condition?
70
The form is generated solely from a stream
of design and planning theory, showing no
response to its setting.
Perhaps it is un-
fair to contend that the proposed urban form
is not "good";
we could argue that the form
is not urban at all.
In either case, the
central point is that as a response to a city
of buildings, streets, parks, neighborhoods,
etc., the proposed form is inappropriate. It
distances itself from its setting, provides
little diversity in building form, leaves
space without a developed identity,
and really
does not explore the human experience of inhabiting Place.
The concept of a major landfill development on
the Hudson River side of Lower Manhattan is
carried through all five plans.
The
form and
sponsors of development are the factors which
change and which we study.
The first plan was
a combination of the business community's
inventory of development activity or proposals
in the Wall Street area and a further expression of their desire to see development continue to serve their interest.
The second plan follows up on the Department
of Marine and Aviation's landfill proposal,
supported for the most part by the DowntownLower Manhattan Association, keeping it as a
mixed-use development.
PLAN 2 -
The second plan, of early 1966, was a State
1966
Harrison Plan:
sponsored by
initiated action.
Governor Rockefeller
Nelson Rockefeller, the plan was prepared by
Sponsored by Governor
Wallace K. Harrison and proposed "a surprisingly
complete community for 63000 people to
be
built on "air rights" over the Hudson River
the scheme is a two-level one, with major
buildings and parks, and pedestrians on the
upper surface;
light industrial, automobile,
and garage areas are below under a concrete
Aeft ar tre.na
opportunities in the
growing trend to
lailer-scale
plannins
platform.
Landfill for the project will comprise some
98 acres
[Architectural Record July '66,
"The Changing Job To Be Done", Herbert L.
Smith, Jr.]."
The concept of a 24-hour,
multi-function community "to inject vitality
into the night and weekend vacuum of the
Wall Street area" remained a primary goal.
*OAfl^A.
0"14
O*~
The second plan for Battery Park City is in
some respects the reformed child of the
Radiant City.
It still exhibits a similar
"conceived and executed with a single pattern
(.cookie cutter)" mentality as the first plan:
similar towers march one after another down
the site.
There is, however, another level
of thought in this scheme as represented by
the smaller scale, various shapes, buildings
between the towers, the indication of
building/land use and planted areas. This is
the reform,
the relationship between buildings
and setting in recognition of the necessity
for varying degrees of openness and size of
public space.
Most of the facilities needed to
form a complete community are
included in this big scheme by WalaC
K. Harrison for Battery Park City
in Manhattan. Sponsored by
Governor Nelson Rockefeller,
the project would be built on
fill over the Hudson River.
space defines smaller groupings of built form
which come together to compose the whole.
There are still
L~z-
The texture of buildings and
no streets indicated,
not the primary public place.
ui
they are
Streets are
recognized in that vehicular access points
disappear into the lower deck of this two-deck
scheme.
Ii
(i!
The streets that exist in Lower
Manhattan are allowed to approach Battery Park
City, then they are devoured. The upper deck
*
o
HOUSING
M
MUNICIPAL
CULTURAL B RELiGiOUS
SCHOOLS
*
COMMERCIAL & 2ECE
is the primary public space;
public if you
are a pedestrian, inaccessible if you are in
a car.
The length-wise promenade is almost a
main-street for the development -
a mainwalk
-
but without the romantic landscape one
associates with the car-free pedestrian
[
~environment,
or even a grand tree-lined
boulevard.
meanI
We move from cluster to cluster,
use to use, along this main-walk but the
public place, by virtue of being isolated
from the existing network of public space(s),
that is, the street pattern one level below,
becomes a quasi-private terrace and the added
level of thought and articulation of the
]
built form relationships simply looks onto
Lower Manhattan, connecting to it only
0
visually, and from a safe distance.
Little is
published on this plan, at least not
in the form Harrison set down;
is
also, partially,
the fourth plan
a state effortand Harrison
was also involved with its
planning,
may be some design considerations
so there
carried over,
but the form of the fourth plan is clearly
different than that of the second.
two points to remember:
There are
1) Unlike the first
plan, which was the business community's
recommendation for physical improvement,
this plan is a State government-initiated
proposal, sponsored by a
strong Governor
who would, in three years, give birth to the
powerful development entity - the New York
State urban Development Corporation.
The
UDC's powers and record has already been
discussed.
2)
This 1966 plan makes a far
more sincere attempt at organizing the urban
form of a new community than does the first,
as evidenced by its greater attention to
texture and detail.
In the midst of the proposal to develop
Battery Park City as an autonomous State
effort, the City of New York issued its plan
for future development in Lower Manhattan,
The Lower Manhattan Plan.
It addresses not
only what is to be developed but also the
guiding urban design principles to be followed.
In this respect, the City has begun
to look at the questions of formal relationship of old and new development, something
the first two Battery Park City plans did
not.
The third plan, also issued in 1966
(perhaps
PLAN 3 -
1966, Lower Manhattan Plan
Sponsor:
City of New York Planning
an indication of contending interest around
Commission,
this waterfront development) is a City-
Wallace, McHarg,
The Battery Park City plan
Roberts, & Todd/Whittlesey,
sponsored effort.
Conklin & Roussant proposal
is part of a general strategy for the growth
of Lower Manhattan.
The plan, by Wallace,
McHarg, Roberts, and Todd/Whittlesey, Conklin
and Roussant, proposed a process/approach
which put development activity within the
framework of problem statements, goals, and
guiding principles.
The Battery Park City
site becomes a part of a nearly continuous
Waterfront development.
"The plan begins with an analysis of the
inner city:
historic downtown, the financial
district, with its great canyons, its dense
network of subway lines, its position in the
national economy.
Long-term goals are out-
lined for this core,
areas.
as well as the surrounding
Areas of growth and change are de-
marked and formed into a coordinated pattern
in which each improvement has a related and
multiplying effect
...
.
Proposals for the new
Waterfront are set within the context of this
analysis:
each link in the conceptual plan -
pedestrian routes, waterfront plazas, the
peripheral highway, the housing and office
groupings - are all related to the core, as
well as to each other [The Lower Manhattan
Plan: Summary Report, prepared for the N.Y.C.
Planning Commission 1966]."
Problems are
78
separated into three categories:
1) Function, 2) Environment, and 3) Access
and Movement.
The problems of function
concentrate on the decrease in Lower Manhattan employment in spite of office expansion and the lack of diversity in the area
and thus its inability to compete with Midtown locations.
The problems of environment
focus on the peripheral and waterfront areas,
pointing to the remnants of once-thriving
establishments
(e.g. the fruit and fish market,
obsolete piers, the elevated expressway, and
poorly organized subway stations as 'the cause
of an "uncongenial" atmosphere.
Access and
movement problems for the most part center on
the conflict between the area's narrow
streets as "natural pedestrian ways" and the
LOWER MANHATTAN PLAN
necessity of their handling heavy vehicular
traffic.
The major goal of the plan was the strengthening of the business core " ...
by providing
for prime office expansion, improving its
working environment, diversify its business
life - reducing its vulnerability to the
decisions of a single institution, improving
internal transportation, and enhancing the
city's economic and tax base [Lower Manhattan Plan et al]."
once again,
Three other goals which,
support the residential waterfront
development are:
a) the provisionof a "power-
ful magnet for housing in the City's core
area, b) the introduction of new housing in
the vicinity of major existing and expanding
employment centers and c) "to take maximum
advantage of the great beauty of the downtown's
waterfront and its striking physical plant."
The plan calls for the development of "a downtown waterfront residential community of
80000 to 100000 people
...
the new community
is to be composed of six interconnected development areas
15000 people,
=pns"
=
("neighborhoods") of 10000 -
each centering around waterfront
plazas at the ends of the major downtown
F
streets and axes:
Wall, Broad, Chambers,
Fulton, the World Trade Center ...
These
plazas will form "windows on the waterfront",
Transverse Section
broad openings into the very heart of the city
each development district (or "neighborhood") will contain a mixture of housing at
the water's edge and offices next to the
existing business core [Lower ManhattanPlan]."
The analysis for and form of the third plan
Longitudinal Section
for Battery Park City, now a part of an overall strategy for development in Lower Manhattan,
is
the first
to ask questions about
building, street, and pattern relationships.
The Waterfront development along the edge
of the island is an extension of the uses
and pattern of development in the financial/
civic core.
Although it remains a two-deck
scheme, the new development addresses setting,
new context, and the waterfront.
Streets as
carriers of cars and people is still lacking.
Cars, again, are only allowed to occupy the
lower level of the development.
The public
environment remains a somewhat private terrace,
mimicking a street pattern.
However, the con-
nections from the core to the waterfront, the
extension of old into new, begins to open up
this upper terrace and bestow it with a less
removed feeling,
thus old and new are bridged,
not separated.
The proposed buildings in general recognize
their dual relationship to setting and intervention.
They face the river, existing
buildings across-the-street, and the plazas
82
and paths which form the new public environment.
There is a sense of neighborhoods,
at least defined in
physical terms. The parts
of the proposed form are understandable and
suggest larger relationships without pushing
the scheme to the extent of being a single
"project".
There is
a sense of a wellthought
out, diverse exterior environment.
Most of
all, there is a sense of dialogue between context and intervention.
Although the site plan for the development is
typical of master plans, i.e. an illustration
of what the development should/willAould look
like when complete, the plan's report does
recommend that the City put in
place a develop-
ment agency "with broad powers to carry out
the major elements of the plan", which would
establish the basic form, sequence, and control of the development projects.
In the
next two plans the Battery Park City
Authority and the UDC serve such functions.
Implementation becomes part of the development plan and strategy.
LOWER MANHATTAN SPECIAL DESIGN
The Lower Manhattan Districts, discussed
DISTRICTS -
earlier in the Framework section, as one of
1967-68:
The Urban Design Group
the products of the Urban Design Group's use
of negotiable zoning to achieve urban design
goals, are not a plan for Battery Park City,
but rather the most complex of N.Y.C.'s special
design zoning districts.
They are related to
the third plan in that they were designed to
transform the Lower Manhattan Plan's intent
into zoning law; "while the Lower Manhattan
Plan was expressed in the traditional illustrative site drawing ...
the special districts
undertook to identify the essential design
elements and express them in legal language.
These design elements were defined as:
Design Continuity, Visual Corridors, and
/
Visual Permeability
...
Based on these con-
cepts,a text and illustrative drawings were
devised to control the essential aspects of
the new building without prescribing the
design of buildings
...
The City government
seeks to define only those elements of concern
to the public,
hN
leaving the developer to operate
at will within these clearly stated constraints
The elements of the plan are tied back into
the pre-existing fabric of Lower Manhattan
The zoning districts adoptedfor the lower
Manhattan perimeter required that visual
corridors not only be left open but defined
by new construction. through the useof
""bil-t
" ec
[J. Barnett, Introduction to Urban Design]."
With these zoning controls augmenting the
Lower Manhattan Plan, achieving its vision of
improved urban form becomes
and understandable.
fourth plan.
structured, general,
But then comes forth the
PLAN 4 Sponsors:
1969 PLAN
. Office of Lower Manhattan
Development, N.Y.C.
. Battery Park City
The fourth Battery Park City Plan by Harrison
and Abramovitz (Harrison prepared the second
plan), Conklin and Rossant (Architects and
Planners associated with the third plan), and
Authority, (a N.Y. State
Johnson/Burgee, is a later, 1969 version of
public, non-profit corp
the third plan.
created by the State in
venture which focuses, again, on the 91-92
1968 to finance and develop
acre land fill site, now known as Battery
the site)
Park City.
It is a joint City and State
The scheme proposed 19000 apart-
. Harrison & Abramovitz/Conklin ments for 55000 residents - one third of
& Rossart/Johnson & Burgee
them to be subsidized - and 5 million square
proposal
feet of office space to generate 35000 new
jobs.
"The land has been divided into two principal
parts
...
for the ...
The southernmost portion
office space
(ten acres)
(and) the remainder
(for) high density residential
(development)
including shops, plazas, greens, coves, and
an esplanade along the river's edge,
86
[Architectural Record June 1969 "Battery Park
City: A Proposal]."
The total cost was
estimated at over $1 billion with cost to the
city being $100 million for depressing the
Westside Highway, and projected revenue to
the city between $25 and $35 million annually.
The early 1980's was the slated completion
Battery
Park
City:
date. It wasn't.
The form of the '69 plan is rigider, less
integrated into the existing, than the third
A proposal or new housing,
new jobs, and new
land ...
perhaps a new kind ot urban life
tor
proposal
asweepitn
Cityas
BanervPark
r-~ therev salaaar as a parsionot our lariget
Cityaanchea bv boti elson Rocketelle
andJohnUindsayas the largesturaan development project in the hstory of the
country.It wtllbe bocatedin what is no. a
partion of the tiion Rivet 'e &e"Ia
phoio. abu*) tkir filled land betweenSatlerv Park and ChambrenStreei in lower
pfrttpaliv
MinanhattanThe two Agencites
iat creaion havebeenNe- York
' a ioloet
Cttv-%
Osic. of tower ManhattanDevelopmet. and the BatteryPark City Aothorty.
as
created inv the Statelegitlaure o 19%A
a pubbr. non-prontcorporaton tar the purpises ot directingandfinancing the deveiopment or the iale Under thee two
errrrn the areent desirnandmasterplan
o
-.. cres he -rrrs.tmas
4
rn & *.trn-..
Ft'p int*"
A
r
nitts
htn
ACOrO Avno
4ACttIECIURM
14
plan, the Lower Manhattan plan.
second plan,
Harrison's,
it
takes the southern
tip of the site to concentrate its
onto isolated "pods".
Like the
office space
The proposed "City"
works as a single "Building", its core a
shopping and circulation spine/mall running
the length of the site - pedestrian activity
drawn into the building-as-city and isolated
from Lower Manhattan's core.
It is not a
87
series of neighborhoods.
In 1973 the scheme
was modified in response to financial and
market conditions.
"The spine was shortened
and the multiple uses along it simplified.
The housing was moved onto pods, and the
shopping center became a separate, though
connected, unit.
The office buildings
(remained) to the southern end of the site
IBattery Park City Draft Summary Report and
1979 Master Plan]. "
One of the housing pods
was constructed, to keep the Battery Park
City Authority financially afloat, but
executing the entire plan was given up on.
Although the 1969 plan is a version of the
1966
(Plan 3) Lower Manhattan Plan, which
takes on part of the proposed waterfront
development, it violates the '66 plan in
many respects.
Mostly, it doesn't fully
respect the "essential design elements" -
88
design continuity, visual corridors, visual
permeability - of the Lower Manhattan Districts which were designed to translate the
'66 plan's intent into zoning law.
probably is due- to two factors:
(This
1) as a
partial State effort the 1969 Plan did not
have to obey the City's zoning law, and
2) there was room in the zoning laws translation of the third plan's intent to interpret the "essential design elements" and
degree of compliance with them).
The '69
plan treats the site as a single building/
project with an internal logic which sets
it
apart
from the pre-existing context.
It, like the plans before it, is a multilevel deck scheme - for service, parking,
and shops - and thus effectively cuts the
civic
IAcIUWkS
WN"
PUMIIULAN
O~ULMN)h
new places for pedestrian activity and the
waterfront -
its new plazas, parks, and
esplanade - from the Lower Manhattan core,
which, since 1963, the waterfront development
14 H
was intended to reinforce. It isn't clear if
the primary public environment is intended to
......
be the Waterfront esplanade and plazas or the
shopping and circulation mall/spine.
streets do
"C'..
.
A-A
.&d .. b...dv
I.. -.
-ie
t ope . apmaa
me. w- Wad
wo w Icdl owvo we
low
-
Clearly
not serve this function. Although
the Lower Manhattan Plan, Plan 3, also pro-
.
TM
bd.
eo
posed a two-level car free scheme for Battery
Park City, it did, as mentioned before, begin
to mimic them and open up the new urban develop-
T_
ment to the street.
Instead of building upon
this theme, the 1969 plan, Plan 4, ignores it;
its rigid wall of development serves to disconnect rather than connect the waterfront
pedestrial amenities from the Lower Manhattan
core.
The first
plan for Battery Park City structured
the development as an isolated building event,
a single-minded project. The fourth plan
90
conceives of the development as a single
structure.
Buildings related to each other
in a tight all too literally formal sense.
The general pattern of development which
results from this rigid building to building
relationship sets this megastructure apart
from its setting as much as the First Plan's
pure, sleek and minimalist ethic set it
apart.
A\s a megastructure, the new development does
nQt pick up on any cues from the existing
urban fabric.
Building to street relationships
do not exist because there are no streets,
building to context relationships do not exist
because the development reflects solely on
the internal logic and order it creates, and
there are no neighborhoods because "neighborhood" is not contained by four walls.
The
fourth plan takes a step backwards from the
context-sensitive foundation laid down by
I
the Lower Manhattan Plan (Plan 3).
The problems of the 1969 plan set the stage
for the current 1979, Cooper/Eckstut plan.
In their review of the 1969 plan Cooper/
Eckstut examined the real and perceived
Zone B
problems associated with the '69 plan and
Residential
thus hampered development.
problems are:
The "real"
1) Market uncertainty,
2) Overly complicated planning and developRetail Mall
ment controls, and 3) Questions as to the
financial stability of the Battery Park
City Authority.
During the mid-1970's
Lower Manhattan experienced a glut of
Zone A
Commercial
L
__
commercial office space and had a weak
residential market.
"During this period of
uncertainty, the City's large developers
were unwilling to build in Battery Park
City.
These developers, though few in
number, are influential in the construction
of high-rise, large-scale properties that the
Master plan called for [1979 Master Plan Draft
Summary Report, Cooper/Eckstut]."
Problems
arose with the development controls and controlling agencies. By law, the Battery Park
City Authority must have all of its major
expenditures approved by the State's Financial
Control Board.
This is a possible source of
delays in appropriations.
In addition, the
Lower Manhattan Special Zoning Districts,
which cover the site, is administered by the
City Planning Commission and Director of City
Planning.
The multiple approvals needed may
also be a possible source of delay.
"As the Authority began to negotiate with
developers, difficulties arose with the
special zoning district provisions.
The pre-
scribed elevated pedestrian system proved
93
cumbersome and expensive.
The pedestrian
connections and overhead bridges only worked
when linked to other sections of the development.
The plan was clearly not geared to an
incremental building program scheduled to
last more than a decade.
Most importantly,
the District's rigid requirements encouraged
developers to propose buildings that met the
requirements in the most literal way.
design quality suffered.
The
The regulations
caused developers to give first priority to
minimizing their risks, and the broader
design considerations were lost [Battery Park
City Draft Summary Report and 1979 Master Planl."
The Authority, which depended on the revenue
from development activity to cover the debt
servige on its bond issues and administrative
expenses, was put in a position where it was
unable to meet its financial obligations,
due to the lack of development activity.
"Since the provision of infrastructure to
support development has to be carried out by
the Authority, private developers required
complete confidence in the ability of the
Authority to finance such improvements
[.. .Draft Summary Report and 1979 Master Plan]."
The "perceived" development problems are in
part out-growths of the "real" problems.They
are:
1) Lack of assurance about the timely
provision of infrastructure, 2) Uncertainty
about Westway and, 3) Lack of construction
by an initial developer.
As mentioned above, the Authority's shaky
financial picture raised questions as to its
ability to provide infrastructure for the
'69 megastructure scheme when needed.
megastructure,
As a
much of the internal circulation
95
space, e.g. the spine, became public space
and infrastructure for private development,
the way a new road would be, and thus an item
of public expense.
"The state of uncertainty that surrounds Westway (the depressed expressway to replace the
deteriorated West Side Highway) has created
doubts about future access to Battery Park
City.
One doubt relates to access to
ind from
Battery Park City if Westway is not built.
Another doubt concerns the potential impact on
Battery Park City during the construction
period if
Westway is
built [1979 Master Plan]."
Finally, as with many large-scale projects,
no developer wanted to be first on an unbuilt
uncertain site, especially with the economy
in a state of recession.
The 1969 plan is a product of its time.
It
comes at the beginning of a period of transition in thinking about the city, society,
and city building. The urban design concepts
in good currency were framed by a booming
expansion-oriented
can-do economy and mind-set.
20/20 hindsight shows us that this economic
prosperity was about to change as we entered
Comprehensive City project (Mike Mitchell
and Dave Boutwell, 1969). If the idea of a
single building stretching right across North
America now looks ludicrous or - worse - oldfashioned, it is the more important to remember
that this kind of proposition was in fashion and
credible less than a decade ago, at least as a
'vision' Nor was it alone: by that date the
Austrian Raimund Abraham had already
proposed a structure covering the entire
surface of the globel
the transition period -
the 70's - but in the
late 60's, when this plan was produced, we
could still conceive of building bigger and
better.
New York was "Fun City".
As a product of its time, Battery Park City
as a single building - a framework of retail,
commercial, and residential uses - a megastructure, should not be looked at simply as
a rigid costly scheme, the product of architectural and planning ambition.
To do so
would be to forget the complexity of its
context, its time. "The megastructure ...
symbolized the libertarian aspirations of a
whole post-Beatles generation.
Cities, as
found in real life or envisioned in conventional town planning wisdom, were perceived to be too lumberingly unmanageable to
satisfy the demands of what was described
'the Now Generation'.
Whay they wanted was
'instant city', and although megastructure
proved incapable of delivering it fast
enough, it had seemed - as of 1964 -
that it
might [R. Banham, Megastructure: Urban
Futures of the Recent Past,
Urbanisme spatiale (Yona Friedman.
1960-62). Characteristic applicationsof Friedman's almost invariable system of 'spaceframes-in-the-air' to the renovation of New
York
The elevated
frames were to be filled with adjustable lightweight structures, in studied contrast to the
mass and mess of the city below.
Hudson, London]
1976 Thames &
."
Megastructure can be seen as the Modern
Movement's vision of the city in the 60's.
"As a way of imposing a form of order on 'the
chaos of our cities' it was an invention of
architects, whatever other tides of opinion
98
appeared to support it;
and it was finally
abandoned by them because it offered to
generate a form of order that they themselves
could not manage [R. Banham, Megastructure...1"
The context of the sixties both nurtured and
attacked the permissive promise of instant/
compact/plug-in/flexible city.
Megastructure
was an interpretation of the mood of the "now
generation".
But, the management and capital
investment required to realize megastructure
linked the concept too closely with "the
establishment", the antithesis of the "now
generation".
"Megastructure, almost by definition, would
mean the destruction or overshadowing of
small-scale urban environments;
had just rediscovered "community"
those who
in
the slums
would fear megastructure as much as any other
99
kind of large-scale renewal programme ...
For the flower children, the drop-outs of
the desert communes, the urban guerrillas,
the community activist, the politicized
squatters, the Black Panthers, the MiddleClass amenitarians and the historical conservationists, ...
the art-school radicals,
and the participants in
Walking City project (Ron Herron and
Brian Harvey of Archigram. 1963). Most
celebrated of early Archigram projects, largely
because of the alarm caused among the older
planning Establishment by the thought of
'elements of the capital city' being put on legs
and set to roam the world. Their location here
in the East River. with the towers of Manhattan
in the background, suggests a deliberate
challenge to older visions of the future - but it
was always dangerous to take Archigram too
seriously, or at apparent face value.
. . . street democracies.
Megastructure was almost a perfect symbol of
liberal-capitalist oppression.
It was con-
demned almost before it had a chance to
happen [R. Banham, Megastructure ... ."
Given this changing social climate could
commitment to the '69 plan's Megastructure
haye held firm for over a decade to see it
through?
Given this chaning social climate,
is it a wonder that the fifth, 1979, plan
for Battery Park City goes back to the contextual aspirations of the 1966 Lower Manhattan Plan?
99.1
Landfill Extension
Tribeca Residential
Conversions and Retail
Development
Renewal Area
Vacant Land
World Trade Center
Complex
Proposed Amex
Reloiction
Westway ROW
Greenwich
Special District
Pier A
Historic Designation
Construction Since 1969
-
South Street Seaport Project Area
Changes Since
1969
100
PLAN 5
-
Sponsor :
1979
Battery Park City
Authority
Proposal:
Cooper/Eckstut Associates
The fifth and current Battery Park City plan
is a cooperative effort between the U.D.C.,
The Battery Park City Authority, New York
City, and New York State.
The UDC acquired
title to the landfill site, in late 1979,
through the use of its power of eminent
domain.
This was done in cooperation with
the City, which until this point owned the
site.
The Battery Park City Authority, now a subsidiary of the UDC and having the same Chief
Executive Officer, has leased the site from
the UDC and is required to develop it in
compliance with the new, 1979, Master Plan
prepared by Cooper/Eckstut.
The City1.s given
the right to re-acquire the development area
within 18 months of notice of the date upon
which all notes, bonds,
and other indebtedness
of BPCA and advances made by New York to BPCA
101
are repaid, subject to existing leases,
tenancies, etc.
and Mayor,
The Governor, Hugh Carey,
Ed Kock,
are to propose and support
legislation to make an $8 million fund available to BPCA bondholders for amortization of
outstanding BPCA obligations.
The Authority
is given the power to reduce ground-rent and
in-lieu-of-real property tax payments as incentives for commercial development.
The 1979 Plan for Battery Park City calls for
the development of: a maximum of 6 million
square feet of office and commercial space,
16,000 apartment units, and 65 acres of open
space ranging from public right-of-ways to
parks, building courtyards, and esplanades at
a projected cost of $53,200,000
in 1979 dollars
In this fifth/Cooper/Eckstut/1979
Streets and Blocks
plan,design,
and development guidelines are used to control
102
the generation of the overall pattern of
I
development, map open spaces, locate structures, control building form, and develop
a detailed street environment. The general
~1II2
pattern of development of the '79 plan calls
for a system of streets and blocks consistent
and continuous with the existing level and
grid pattern of the immediate area as a structure for development.
Streets are the "spine"
of activity and movement.
Buildings are to
occupy locations on these blocks and are
regulated in their form by near-conventional,
though site-specific, bulk controls.
The
building-as-city concept is rejected in favor
of a series of smaller development areas, an
idea the Lower Manhattan plan advances, by
various architects and developers. The street
17
system i.s the framework in which development
occurs and human activity takes place, as the
Land Use Allocation
1811 plan for Manhattan set the pattern for
103
the City's development to date.
Chanb
Street Park
Open space occupies close to 70% of the site
but it
Noth EndAwnw
scale;
is
broken down to a familiar urban
special outdoor places, arcaded
streets, parks, waterfront coves, are created
which buildings enclose and reinforce:
attention is given to access points to retail
New1h
Cove Plaza
and residential uses,
the location
of building
lobbies, planting, and street-wall dimensions
and character.
Rectx
Place
The basic image of the plan is
clear, the best
that New York has to offer in buildings and
streets serve as a model for designing this
nuth FrwlAew
addition to the city.
The use of zoning
regulation, building height restrictions,
build-to lines, setbacks, in conjunction with
urban renewal mapping of streets, parks, and
arcades, has allowed the Cooper/Eckstut plan
104
to directly address the site and location
specific design issues of the development.
1oo
Albw, U-1
Clearly the design approach of the 1979 plan
best answers the four questions asked in this
thesis of the proposed Battery Park plans.
Block 6
The street is the primary public environment,
~.
it holds the development together.
As an
organizing element, both in terms of urban
form and development phasing, this thoughtful
comment on and replication of the Lower Man~IA
Block 5
hattan street pattern is certainly a less
expensive, more flexible form of infrastructure than what was proposed in the 1969 plan
(Plan 4).
Finally we have a plan which gives
the street its multiple purpose, link, access
to place, and place.
urban environment is
Lobby
Residentia-Community Facilities
F
Arc.ds
consistent with our expec-
tations of it from experiences in the City.
Retail- Second Story Commercial
Battery Park City -1979 Master Plan
G:,xper.Eckstu1 osouiale5
Its form and place in the
1
Context
and consistency are
key words
in
the
105
1979 plan,
In fact, it proves interesting
to note what other key words and phrases
are used, in terms of their physical form
and urban theory implications. "The (1979)
Master plan takes as its theme the acceptance
of all that is desirable about New York's
basic pattern of development."
Implicit in
this theme is a contextual approach to urban
design.
Pattern and grid are recognized as
generators of urban form.
These form genera-
tors are "extended" to achieve a development
I
I
I
that is a part of a whole.
This extensionof
patter and grid will "easily integrate
its
building forms with adjacent area's existing
development".
The extension and integration
of the existing and the proposed should yield
a "recognizable and more understandable form".
Basic circulation access should "emphasize
the ground level".
"Visual corridors connect"
the pedestrian, the building, the new, the
106
existing, the context.
"Battery Park City
should reproduce and improve 'what is best
about New York's neighborhoods ...
neighbor-
hoods being the product of 'incremental
development' ...
having ...
'intense mixture
of land uses, special character, small scale
spaces, and intimate texture."
We have in the 1979 plan an approach to urban
design which roots itself in an existing
context, investigates/reads its structure,
searches for strengths and proposes to act
in a way familiar to the existing context.
Like the Lower Manhattan Plan, the '79 plan
continues the pattern and forms in the context into the intervention.
The major
public and pedestrian realm is the street or
the waterfront amenities.
Sense of place is
structured in a similar fashion in the intervention as in the context:
by street relating
107
to building relating to block. There is a
sense of continuity of pattern and access.
The building/street relationship allows for
a familiar use and control of street-asplace.
The principles of the '79 plan can
r-Lane Of Arcade to Match Adjacent Building
provide for a more sensitive plan, a site
specific response, than can those of the '60's.
Today we contend that context is essential to
architecture and planning.
We (should) fault
LMinimum Spacing 17' 0'
the Modern Movement City Planning, or the
1969 Plan not for their vision, for without
Residential
vision where are we, but for the exclusion in
Possible Transfer
their vision of the cQmplexity of context.
Basin
Commercial
One can question the degree to which an urban
environment designed in a contextual manner
Retail
can avoid the flaws of its context.
12'0" Clear
Arcades
2'x 3' Max. Column
We can
ask this of the '79 plan, in particular to
its allocation of land-use and its scale of
development/buildings.
108
The concept diagram shows that the development
North Area:
Residential
is
1!
basically a commercial core flanked by two
residential areas.
Despite its praise for the
intense and varied/mixed land-use offered in
New York's neighborhoods (Greenwich Village,
Brooklyn Heights, and the Upper East Side are
cited as examples), the '79 plan segregates
Central Area:
Commercial
the residential and commercial/retail uses to
their own "neighborhoods".
A closer look at
the Lower Manhattan Context reveals a possible
South Area:
Residential
Waterfront
Open Space
influence - the World Trade Center.'
A(
Battery Park City's commercial core seeks to
relate to the Trade Center, thus its location
as directly opposite.
The trade center is
essentially a commercial super-block.
It
possesses none of the qualities the '79 plan
espouses, yet its influence is felt in the
Land Use Concept
'79 plans proposal for the commercial center.
\\
The clearest sign of this influence is the
109
fact that a commercial center is proposed.
Why couldn't there be several smaller commercial areas?
Why couldn't commercial
activity occur along a "main street"?
Why
couldn't there be the mix of land-uses the
plan in theory admires?
Clearly to do so
would be to propose the exact opposite of
the World Trade Center, but isn't this what
the plan has as its
intent?
Given a commercial core, why is it a superblock?
is
Granted, it isn't a super-block which
insensitive to its context, but why is
there a need to create an isolated commercial
island which cannot be penetrated by car?
Why should the two residential areas be
separated in such a fashion?
Neither midtown
nor Lower Manhattan are super-blocks but they
Commercial Center
are, nonetheless, major commercial centers.
Roof Plan
Battery Park GCy -1979 Master Plan
AlexanderCooper Assoaate
Why couldn't Battery Park City's commercial
109.1
The actual design for ulie commercial core
of Battery Park City. Cesar Pelli is the
architect for Olympia & York Properties.
Above: the whole complex as it will be
seen from the Hudson River with the
World Trade Center towers in the
background.
110
center follow their example?
AA
Given a commercial center which takes the
form
of a super-block, why are the proposed
structures the size of entire blocks
surrounding area?
in the
They are huge and their
size does not seem warranted given that there
is 13 acres of open site on which to array
them.
Don't they violate their context?
Do
they accept and reproduce the best or the
worst in the context?
In context there are conflicts.
developments/buildings/events
to the majority.
There are
which go counter
We cannot of course assume
that the majority of anything is necessarily
"correct",
the exceptions may well be the best
that context has to offer.
But,
in a specific
case, if we contend that positive urban
qualities are in
the majority,
then qualities
111
counter to these should not be "extended
and integrated" into the intervention.
Ideas in good currency are not cure-alls.
They do not replace thought.
Although we may
agree that the Lower Manhattan Plans initial
contextual concerns which was later picked
up by the 1979 plan is indeed an appropriate
way to intervene, physically, in the city,
the acceptance of context without thought is
as much a fault as its rejection without
reason.
Throughout the procession of plans for Battery
Park City the changes in the proposed urban
form has been the focus of our attention.
From this examination of physical form we
Renderingofagallerv in
Park City complex.
have commented on the implicit urban design
ethic.
Three basic city planning approaches
are evident:
The self-contained Modern City,
112
The Megastructure, and the Extension of
existing setting into intervention. The first
two plans are variations on the minimalist
modern city, the third and fifth plans fall
into the third, contextual category, and the
fourth plan stands alone as the only attempt
at a true megastructure.
The first four plans were conceived in a time
of optimism -Watergate and Vietnam were not
yet household words,
the age of Camrelot lingered
on, the economy was booming, we had the confidence to build "bigger and better", as the
saying goes.
The '69 plan comes near the
end of this era.
As the sixties gave way to
the seventies, a booming economy gave way to
recession, building activity in the city came
to a near halt, N.Y.C.
flirted with bankruptcy
opposition to the war mounted, and the White
House was scandalized.
The mind-set of
113
American society experienced changes felt by
professionals and non-professionals alike.
To the City/planner, the plurality of public
interests was formally recognized as a part
of the planning process.
Advocates for the
rights of the under-represented gained
support.
Community and neighborhood re-
emerged as participants in the planning
process.
The urban form changes exhibited by the procession of Battery Park City plans suggests
a growing sensitivity to the public environment and existing development, greater
attention to implementation means, and a more
sophisticated use of public control of
private deyelopment.
Planning a part of the
city is a complex undertaking;
appropriately
enough, the plans become more complex with
each successive iteration - the fourth plan
114
pushes formal complexity or at least rigidity
to an extreme and in so doing ignores the
complexity of relationships with its setting.
From 1963 to 1979, the schemes for Battery
Park City have been a design inquiry into
[
the planning of a city.
The driving force
behind this inquiry is the dialogue amongst
proposed intervention, means of achieving
the new urban vision, and evolving urban
design theory.
It has been, and is, a
learning experience for the city planning
profession and students of the city. The
new direction taken by Cooper/Eckstut in
the fifth, 1979, Battery Park City plan
is further developed in their plan for
the redevelopment of Times Square. In that
proposal, which we examine next, the new
direction in urban design in N.Y.C. is
brought up to date.
115
The purpose of the 42nd Street Redevelopment
is self-explanatory.
Times Square is synon-
ymous with entertainment and tourism in New
York City.
14
Worldwide, along with the Man-
hattan skyline, it is the image and signature
of the city.
Times Square and 42nd Street
have also become synonymous with crime and
4
pornography.
:1
I
I
*1~~
As-a place for business or
tourism, the area is currently less than
attractive.
Its potential however is great;
there are of course the theaters and restaurants of Broadway;
there is the ease of
access provided by the numerous subway lines
in the area as well as the Port Authority Bus
Terminal, Grand Central Station, and Penn
Central Station;
there is a growing amount
of office development around it, and a
gigantic convention center being constructed
just blocks away.
With a joint City/State
(via the UDC) effort, a major intervention
116
is
proposed for the area to stimulate develop-
ment and realize its great potential.
The
42nd Street case doesn't have a history as
long as that of Battery Park City's, nor a
I
procession of plans leading to the present.
-F
Its sole and direct ancestor is the "City at
]
42nd Street", a plan/study executed by
----
2?
~TIL
Richard Weinstein (a former director of
N.Y.C.'s Urban Design Group), Donald Elliott,
V14
DAvis Brody & Associates, and Jaquelin T.
Robertson.
The current plan, by Cooper/Eck-
stut, "accepts most of the original design
concept, but translated it into a series of
'K
~LU4L
j
explicit descriptions of building shapes,
elevator cores, facing materials - in other
words, almost to the level of detail that
would be described in an architectural contract as the schematic phase of design
42nd Street Development Pro
Cooper, Ecksau Assobases
[Barnett ...
Intro to etc.]."
116.1
Model of the original design concept for
the 42nd Street redevelopment, made
under the direction of Richard Weinstein
and Donald Elliott, urban design by Davis
Brody & Associates and Jaquelin T.
Robertson.
117
-T-1
The history of Battery Park City is that of
a progression of plans which, in the end,
.1~
_
J
seek to control the public-oriented aspects
--
of the development without designing the
M
buildings past the stipulation of bulk, set41-d
backs and arcades.
TMdesign
In the 42nd Street case
of buildings also falls into the
realm of the public's concern;
architectural
-- -A
design becomes development requirements.
42-'
The
redevelopment proposal calls for the development Qf up to 7 million square feet of new
office and commercial space, the improvement
of the numerous subway stations in the Times
Square area, and the renovation and re-use
of nine theaters.
10 Theater Option
Sites 5&6 - Uses Street Level
~L
*.
. . . ..
"The design guidelines,
which serve as a framework for developers ...
...
are intended to keep 42nd Street and Times
Square a vibrant and public space.
1heat
42nd Street Development Project
Cooper Eckstut Assoaates
Diversity
in ground floor retail space, directly
visible and accessible from the street is
118
required.
Designed to frame the public
spaces to Times Square and 42nd Street
through
bulk, height, and setback requirements, the
guidelines will coordinate the development of
separate buildings and assure an integrated
urban approach [UDC Press Release, "Governor
Carey and Mayor Kock release a request for
proposals for the redevelopment of the 42nd
Street/Times Square Area", Thurs. 6/4/81]."
The most striking feature of the design guidelines is their translation of a contextual
design/planning ethic into what appears to be
1r
a design proposal rather than guidelines.
In
these tightly crafted guidelines we see the
UDC's ability to impose its own building
.1*
regulations used boldly and creatively.
0
Sit Easeont
SiieL-Cosqo"d
any parcel in
42nd Street Developmet Proqect
On
the development site, the allowed
building envelope is
described in detail. For
Cooper, Eckstut Associates
example, if we look at the office structures
119
proposed for the Times Square intersection,
-10\
the intended outcome is:
11\140
"
...
the design of
~#y.
the office building group at the southern
~
end of Times Square shall give special em-
-
C)4V
phasis to the proportions of the building
-
facing Times Square and shall incorporate
prominent features in their exterior treatment of highlight corners, edges, and roof
tops visible from Times Square [42nd Street
Development Project, Design Guidelines,
4
Special Features Supplement]."
As a statement, there is room to interpret
the desired outcome.
This is often the case
42nd Street Deeopment Project if we seek to achieve a physical/visual
Cooper, Eckstut Associates
result using solely text.
Required
Bulk Controls
Roof Plan Office Sites: 5 Site Design
14
il
1981
'L
L
HQwever these
guidelines go beyond a statement of intent
to a fine-tuned series of bulk and elevation
controls which both sculpt and give image to
the buildings.
120
The bulk controls "have been established to
enhance the pedestrian environment, take advantage of prominent and highly visible locations along the street, and to provide appropriate transitions between preserved buildings
and adjacent new development ...
there are
typically no coverage requirements, rather,
coverage is treated indirectly through control of street walls, setbacks, and building
heights;
street walls, particularly in
...
the mid-block, are the key to maintaining
380
..
the low-rise character of the street.
The
articulation of those walls can also rein-
"to
force important height relationships with
..
. ..
surrounding buildings, capitalize on highly
..
5
visible locations, and break down the size
Required
Bulk Controls
Office Sites: 5 Site D44sgh
J,II; , II
I
I
of larger building surfaces ...
The height
of new buildings is controlled to ensure
the integrated development of separate
42nd Street Development Project
Cooper, Eckstut Associates
buildings;
...
New developments should avoid
121
scale conflicts with adjacent buildings ...
where the height of buildings change at the
boundary between sites, the street height
wall of the building to be preserved shall be
continued for 30 linear feet into the new
development.
This will ensure continuity and
a sufficient transition to the smaller scale
of the mid-block [42nd Street Development
Project, Design Guidelines]."
The bulk controls seem akin to end requirements
or performance standards which yield the basic
physical form configuration of the development.
This configuration emphasizes three levels;
the street-as-place/the pedestrian level, the
Times Square zone of prominent buildings and
views within the square, and the city-wide
scale of the skyline.
To enhance the building
configuration from the bulk controls, Special
design features - elevation controls - are
122
layered over the bulk requirements.
Together the two seek to produce a New York
art deco-ish type of skyscraper, occupying
a middle ground between N.Y.C.'s landmark
early skyscrapers and the curtain-wall structures currently erected.
"Several principles underlie the special
features controls:
1)
Incorporation of
changes of scale in order to highlight the
most prominent building faces visible from
Times Square, to vary wall surfaces and to
provide appropriate transitions from avenue
developments (where bulk is concentrated)
to mid-block theaters, 2) Diversity and
contrast in the use of materials, colors, and
finishes to develop such scale changes, to
prevent a monolithic appearance in any of the
buildings, to emphasize building elements
Office Sites 1&2: Lin & Sga
Elevation Controls
such as entrances, retail spaces, public
123
circulation areas, or other promient parts
of buildings, to achieve visual variety along
the street, 3)
Greater transparency of glass
surfaces near the street level, than on upper
floors to maximize visibility of activities
from the street, 5)
Incorporation of promi-
nent signage and dramatic lighting techniques
in order to maintain the 'bright lights'
character of the street, 5)
Use of reflective
or highly polished surface materials in order
tQ enliven the daytime environment of the
street, and 6) Retention and restQration of
historic masonry facades as places of special
emphasis along the street 142nd Street
Special Design Suppl.,]."
The concept of
contextual design plays a more central role
in the 42nd Street case than it does in
Battery Park City.
Office Sites 1
l 2- Prominent Edges
Elevation Controls
In
the latter,
the problem
posed was that of addition to an urban fabric,
the former asks for a method of intervening
124
within the fabric of a city, Although the
site of the 42nd Street proposal, 13 acres,
is only 14% of the 92 acre Battery Park site,
it is l3acres in the very heart of the city,
Glass Curtain Wall
having the potential of severely affecting,
in a positive or negative way, a physical
I
I
settin
iprtant to the city.
Sensitivity
to context is demanded if good urban
......
is to result.
1111
form
The proposed guidelines ex-
hibit such sensitivity, from its recognition
Metal Panel &Glass
50 %min Solid
............. ti.ve, visible 7th Avenue-Broadway intersection
III
with 42nd Street, the low-rise, mid-block
theaters which give the area its night life,
.............
2nd Story Retail
75 % Transparent
Thraspaofl
Signband
SQnban.
upt a Storefront
Sill
nd the 8th Avenue corridor dominated by the
Port Authority Bus Terminal
-
to the balance
between new construction and renovation and
preservation.
Dthxt
42nd Sw4eiS
Su'
4rhri
Contextual design today can probably be put
125
into two categories:
1) Contextual design
as a process which seeks to mimic the form,
scale, texture, and aura of its environs or,
2) Contextual design as the expression of an
historicist impulse to recapture the vocabulary of forms rejected by the modern movement.
The first strand produces buildings
which seek to fit into their context.
It
recognizes the location-specific nature of
a site.
The second strand produces buildings
in context with a stream of architectural
theory
and forms,but not necessarily, the
context of the site.
Although there may be
similar intent in the two strands, the second
category of contextual design, i.e. Context
Suth Side
Materials
Elevation Controls
as Style, can easily be at odds with its context if the context in question is not within the vocabulary of forms in vogue.
A local case of contextual-design-as-style
126
is One Seaport Plaza, advertised in the New
York Times as New York's first contextual
office building.
The context is the South
Street Seaport, a collection of low-rise
buildings circa early 1800's and the focus
of one of the lower Manhattan
waterfront
developments set forth by the same strategy
which proposed Battery Park City.
2) Seaport Plaza
The so-
called contextual office building is a 34storey, very modern structure with strip
windows.
The supposed contextual part of the
building is the east facade which faces the
seaport buildings and, in response to them,
changes from strip windows to individual
ones - 34
stories of individual windows.
"The fact of the matter is ...
modern office building.
it is a big,
There is real
reason to question whether any 34-storey
Schermerhorn Row
tower, no matter how thoughtfully designed,
can be fully 'in context' with a group of
127
small and fairly delicate 19th century buildings.
But to claim that this building is
contextual architecture is to cheapen that
valuable and important concept [P. Goldberger,
"When Architect's Labels Don't Mean What They
Say", N.Y. Times Magazine]."
Arguments can be made against contextualism
or for limited contextualism.
My critique
of the World Trade Center's influence on the
commercial core of Battery Park City can be
seen as such an argument.
One can also pro-
pose a non-contextual intervention for
polemical purposes, to question the status
quo of context.
It is clear however that a
project the scale of the 42nd Street redevelopment, in a location as landmark, in
all senses of the word, as Times Square
calls for, is an intervention which responds
to its physical form as sensitively as we
FM
128
argue city planning should respond to the
needs of communities.
To understand the urban form of Manhattan
we must realize that real estate deals are
the force which drive it.
A European city
such as Paris has a long history of slow,
steady growth, with the exception of the
Haussmann and post-WW 1I
interventions,
whereas New York turns over its urban fabric
at 4 far more rapid pace.
The Lever Brothers
Building, a landmark of Modern Architecture
and a mere 25 years old, is currently
threatened by destruction to make room for a
larger, more profit-maximizing structure.
fjp-
Paris indeed may have experienced major
growth since WW II, but not for the most part
in historic Paris.
It accommodated a popula-
tion increase of 3 million in the suburbs of
The Lever House site could accommodate a larger building, and
Lever Bros. has begun to negotiate with a real estate developer.
paris.
The island of Manhattan has experienced
129
such growth within its borders.
"The
immediate office boom after World War II in
Manhattan, variously estimated at between
57 million square feet to 70 million square
feet, was more than twice the amount built
in the same period in the nine cities ranked
in size below New York:
Los Angeles, Chicago,
Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, St. Louis and Cleveland. [S. Zoll,
"King Kong in New York" Space & Society, 18,
M.I.T. Press]."
In the process of this perpetual destruction
and rebuilding it appears that "(t)he city
has fallen prey to an attitude that can be
called Urban Darwinism - the survival of only
the most lucrative use of any given plot of
land.
It gives us not a city of Brownstones
and large buildings in balance with each
other, but a city of huge towers crowded
130
one upon another, filling block after block.
It's a different kind of mid-town altogether
one with vastly greater numbers of people
crammed into what feels like less and less
space, of choking traffic.
It is, in short,
a place in which the quality of life - which
is presumably the reason any one who has a
choice in the matter settles in cities in
the first place - inevitably must decline
IP. Goldberger, "The Limits of Urban Growth"
N.Y, Times Magazine, 11/14/82]."
In New York it becomes easy to violate the
"existing city" because others may soon
follow with similar outlaw developments, thus
changing context and producing a "New City",
a new status quo it seems.
Oddly enough,
the fairly sensitive 1966 Lower Manhattan
Plan is an example of this.
To counteract
the effect of the mammoth World Trade Center
-
131
on the area's scale and skyline, the plan
recommended the construction of more mammoth
buildings.
The total demolition of the 13 acre Times
L~~~dtAl
Square site probably was not possible given
EouILAiLJI\L
strong support for the theater and historic
preservation groups, but certainly, as in the
case of John Portman's New York Marriott Marquis Hotel, a handful of blocks north of the
42nd Street site, we could have lost some
I
_~~~-T
EE I-zCj
Ef
_1
"N
portion of the theaters which the Cooper/Eck-
u J
stut plan saves.
Portman's project isn't
contextual at any significant level.
Con-
textual design doesn't prevent new develop-~~
V
49
ment but it does suggest appropriate and
.
in appropriate actions.
his work in
Portman's hotel -
general - has an insular, imported,
dropped-in feel.
As- a mode of urban inter-
vention, this is insensitive;
one starts from
132
scratch - scratch achieved by leveling the
site.
This is, of course, the way develop-
ment occurs in general.
However, the Port-
man project is in the Theater Special Design
District which seeks to avert the destruction
of existing theaters and promote the construction of new ones via incentive bulk
bonuses to developers.
have a theater in it
two of them.
Portman's scheme does
but it also destroys
When Radio City Music Hall,
during the mid '70's, was in danger of falling
prey to what Goldberger calls urban darwinism
[note:
"In the legal battle to exert control
(over real estate via zoning in the early
1900's) - or to avoid it - Darwin was evoked
by both sides.
The biological battle for
life developing into a way of interpreting
the social sciences,
of which life in
the city
was a chief topic of concern [S. Zoll, "King
Kong in New York", Space and Society, 18].")
133
Innovative schemes were prepared to explore
the feasibility of office structures rising
above the music hall with minimal disturbance
to its landmark Art Deco interior.
Similar
schemes could have been executed for the
Portman project, indeed the Helen Hayes and
the Morosco, the theaters razed, are/were
less sensitive than Radio City in terms of
landmark status.
But, in Portman's words,
the foot-print of the structure made
it impossible to build over and still handle
the logistic of all that has to move in and
out of a facility of that size [Skyline,
Jan. 183, "Interview: John Portman and Peter
Eisenman"]."
The problem with this argument
is the the "foot-print" existed only on
paper whereas the theaters which it stamps
out existed in full-scale, three-dimensional
reality.
Paying attention to its place in
the theater district - especially the
134
'matched pair' relationship of the Helen
Hayes and the Lunt Fontanne Theater, across
the street, a sensitive intervention would
have sought to maintain and modify rather
than eliminate the theaters.
The irony is that the Portman Hotel is a
neighbor of One Astor Plaza, an early development under the Theatre District Zoning.
Here,
the developers were required to building a
theater although the construction of their
office tower did not destroy one.
case Broadway gained a new theater.
In this
In the
Portman case Broadway gains a new Theater and
loses two.
A section through the One Astor Plaza
building shows the location of the theater
and the way the lobby areas look out over
Times Square.
Given the status quo method of development,
as exemplified above, the Cooper/Eckstut
plan -
a plan despite its architectural
specificity is more conventional than the
135
special design zoning districts - seems
justified.
Perhaps, in this instance, the
essential urban design elements are indeed
the buildings. Together, the parcel specific
bulk and elevation controls refine our
definition of a contextual approach to intervention within an urban fabric, but also
brings out some of the complexity in the
concept.
The
approach is illustrated by a look at
the words and phrases used throughout the
incorporate, preserve, charac-
master plan:
ter, maintain,
reinforce,
character of streets
restore, transition, appropriate, relate,
articulation, relationships, perception,
integration,
avoid scale conflicts, continuity,
highlight, avoid undifferentiated, scale,
historic, place.
Like Lynch's dimensions of
performance these terms call for place to have
136
vitality, sense, fit, access, efficiency,
and justice.
Like Anderson's Streets Phases
1-2, they call for the recognition of street
as a complex setting for human activities.
The complexity of the concept is a product
of questions raised by the design-specific
nature of the guidelines:
1)
How much of the
physical form prescription is essential to a
contextual approach and how much is subjective?
2)
Why should one firm's interpretation of
contextual design be enforced as law?,
31 How have the guidelines selected influenced
from its plural context to yield its physical
form requirements?,
4) How has context-percep-
tion of context - shifted over the last decade
or two?, 5)
warranted?
When are design-specific guidelines
137
The retention of the mid-blQck theaters is
the least contestable
plan.
requirement of the
Without them the City and State's
talk of returning Times Square to its former
glory would be without foundation for we
would have no Times Square.
The transition
in scale of the new buildings as they approach
the theaters is also fairly straightforward.
What however determines the 30 linear foot
dimension as the appropriate dimension of
transition area within which the height of
the buildings to be preserved is to be respected'?
Are the facades of the theaters
best "highlighted" by contrasting them with
highly polished, reflective surfaces on the
new developments?
Could the bulk controls
alone have sufficed?
Could the elevation
controls alone suffice?
Clearly, the
different controls serve various purposes,
pay attention to different features of the
138
development, but we have little idea of where
they come from.
They seem to make sense but
it isn't clear what else might make sense.
The commercial center in Battery Park City is
equal in size to the 42nd Street site.
The Kohi, Pederson, Fox entry in the
Batten Park Citycompetition.
For it,
Cooper/Eckstut prepared a set of design guidelines which were written into the lease between
the Authority and the developer for the site,
The Aitchell/Giurgolaentry in the
&tterv Park City competition.
Olympia and York.
The developer then held a
limited architectural competition using the
design guidelines as its foundation.
The
selected scheme, by Cesar Pelli, differs somewhat in form and orientation of its buildings
but, as one might argue in a court of law,
it is within the intent of the guidelines.
The other submitted schemes are all markedly
different from Pelli 's and from one another.
The multiple interpretations which can result
from a competition avoid the issue of having
139
one form's parti taken as law without considering alternatives.
In addition, whole
or partial schemes can be selected, or none.
The third and fourth questions are linked.
The selection of physical form elements/
considerations from context are guided by a
perception of "what's good about context"
that is in a constant state of change.
The
vaguely Art Deco buildings presented as
illustrations of what the design guidelines
could/want to yield are certainly influenced
by the late and post-modern rejection of the
skyscraper-as-cigarette-box.
In form, the
illustrations are closest to the RCA Building
at Rockefeller Center or the old McGraw-Hill
Building, just one block west of the Times
Square site.
In surface treatment however,
they are closest to curtain-wall structures
such as the Olympic Tower, Lever House, and
140
the Grand Hyatt Hotel - all unequivocally
modern buildings which take the Miesian
facade and smooth it out into a more twodimensional mirror surface.
The public's
interest is no longer served by setting
buildings back from the street and providing
plazas and gallerias, but by holding them
to the street and providing a diverse and
visible range of activities along it.
urban form, we contend, is contextual.
Good
Con-
tectual urban form, by the above example, is
plural;
making "sense" of the many trends
occurring in an area.
By what process is
this sorting-out of context done remains a
question.
We have touched upon an answer to the fifth
question.
Design-specific guidelines may be
warranted when buildings are
urban design elements,
the essential
as in a historic
141
district.
Place depends heavily on the
potential environment.
If manipulation of
it threatens to damage or alter a strong,
vital and valuable place then we need to pay
close attention to physical form changes.
Coming to this point, like determining when
a building is a landmark, is an artful task.
it is an architecture of resistance resistance to the tendency to reduce city
building to single issues - ignoring its
complexity.
It isn't an architecture of
nostalgia, imagery, kitch, futurism, or
rigid conservationism, but rather a critical
look at context in the perspective of the
job to be done, the qualities of context,
and time.
141.1
I
as
lf
bK
CONCLUSIONS
142
What is the meaning of the procession of
Battery Park City Plans ? Are the
differences in the schemes simply the
result of the architect/planners involved,
their style ? What is the connection
between the 42nd Street plan and the
Battery Park City Plans ?
The Five Battery Park City Plans and the
42nd Street plan give an account of the
evolution of urban design thinking in
N.Y.C. over the last two decades. The
changes in the basic approach to an urban
intervention suggest a transition in
schools of thought .
Battery Park City plans 1 and 2 are
variations on the Modern Movement's view
of the city; free standing buildings sit
in large open spaces, the good city is
composed of abstract towers and free-flowing
143
parkland.
The Cooper/Eckstut plan for
Battery Park City, plan 5 -
1979, and
Times Square belong to a real streets with
context-sensitive buildings school of
thought, the good city has active and
diverse streets with human scale public
places. BPC plans 3 and 4 are a mixture
of the above two schools, real streets are
mimicked but are within a framework which
does not accept the street as a multifunctional element in the city, the good
city has car free places for people.
These differences are not specific to the
planners involved; they represent streams
of thought to which the planners belong.
In other words , it is not at all a
surprise that Harrison was the designer
of the second BPC plan. He is known for
144
the type of late 50's/ early 60's
Modern architecture which he proposed
and which was
the city building
approach in good currency. Likewise,
it is not a surprise that Cooper/Eckstut
are the planners for the fifth BPC plan
and the Times Square redevelopment,
they are from the school of thought
which has come into currency from the
experience of the last two decades.
There are two major transition points in
this evloution from one urban design school
to another; one
circa 1966 and between
Battery Park City plans 2 and 3, the other
in the mid-70's and between BPC plans
4 and 5.
Many of the forces behind the changes in
the first transition period have already
been discussed in the Framework section.
145
The new critics of city planning , such
as Lynch, Jacobs, and Gans had emerged
and although their influence will be
felt more in the second transition period
clearly they began to present alternative
ways of viewing the city and city planning.
The election of John Lindsay as mayor of
New York City, a young, liberal, progressive
mayor, must also be cited as a factor
causing change. It is under his administration that the Urban Design Group was
formed as a force in the City Planning
Commission as a direct attempt to address
the urban design issues of the day.
The Urban Design Group too is a new
factor in this period; their creative
use of zoning in special design districts
and the City's ability to regulate the form
of development given the 1961 zoning
146
resolution made
achieving a new urban
vision possible. Members of the Urban
Design
Group such as Barnett, Cooper, and
Eckstut did much to influence urban design
in New York in the direction it currently
follows, as exemplified in the Cooper/Eckstut
plans for Battery Park and Times Square.
In fact, the Urban Design Group in
conjunction with the social critics of
city planning
can be thought of as the
two major " departments " in the current
context-sensitive school of urban design.
During this first transition period, new
institutions such as the U.D.C. and the
Battery Park City Authority were created
by the State to finance and execute
major city rebuilding efforts. The agencies
were given a broad scope of authority and
147
powers and were intended to streamline
the city building process. The economy
during this period was strong and expanding
and the new institutions could expect to
command major capital resources.
The proposals for Battery Park which come
during this period, plans 3 and 4, exhibit
the duality of schools of thought mentioned
earlier. They break with the conventional
Modernist city image but in principle
they
still seek to be strong, bigger and better,
gestures in city building.
The third plan, Conklin/ Roussant and others,
did begin to mimic the scale and texture of
streets and buildings
existing in Lower
Manhattan but the new urban fabric was
placed on a deck. The deck was a continuous
structure, a large scale development which
148
makes attempts at breaking down its scale.
This hybrid school accepts the street as
a part of the good city , but they are
to be for people only. The city of
Jacobs and Lynch is accepted in part
but
" improved " by removing the
the car and service spaces from sight.
The-street-as-pedestrian-path however
brings with it images which contradict
the Jacobs/Lynch image of the city;
images of networks of pedestrian only
streets, malls, gallerias -
just the
type of environment proposed in the 3rd
and 4th BPC plans, the latter's Megastructure
pushing the pedestrian only/ deck scheme
to its limits.
During this period there was a desire to
improve the urban fabric and the ability to
do so boldly. The combination resulted in
149
schemes which despite their good intent
opened the possibility for a separation
of new and existing urban fabrics rather
than the integration
of new and old
to their mutual benefit.
The second transition period, mid-70's,
gives us the Cooper/Eckstut plans and
" real streets " in the urban environment.
Here, the social critics have become
household names in the planning and design
community, not to say that all city planners
accepted the
arguments they presented.
The sleek and simple city was giving way
to the city of historic preservation
and restoration, neighborhoods, and community.
Urban renewal was out of favor and concepts
of defensible space and turf defini.tion
were being used to critique the environments
produced by public housing and urban
150
renewal agencies produced; new models
of public housing environments were explored
by these agencies as discussed in the academic
community. Neighborhoods like Greenwich
Village and SoHo experienced increased
growth and popularity
,
supporting
the
Jacobs/Newman/Lynch/Gans et al image of
the city.
Again the economy also proves to be a major
factor affecting the changes in this
period. In the first period the economy was
booming, in this second period thenation
was experiencing
a major economic crisis;
New York City flirted with bankruptcy,
the agencies created during the first
period, the U.D.C. and the BPC Authority,
did go bankrupt. The ability to command major captial reserves to support extensive
city building efforts was no longer a given.
151
It is not a coincidence
that the Cooper/
Eckstut plan for Battery Park City,
executed during this second transition
period, calls for a traditional system of
streets and blocks to structure the
development. In addition to providing
a place for active and diverse human
interaction
the street is also an efficient,
flexible, and moderately priced form of
infrastructure. By regulating the location
and character of the street, the City or
development agency can structure the urban
fabric without committing major capital
expenses, as would be required for the
infrastructure for the '69 Plan's
Megastructure. It also provides a familiar
way of dividing a large site into smaller
developments to be executed in an
incremental manner.
152
In the 42nd Street proposal, the street
is again used in its traditional form as a means to structure the overall development and as the primary public environment,
private development is again publicly
regulated to attend to the character
and quality of the public environmnet
without public authorities taking on
major financial obligations, the street
is again real, active, and diverse.
The evolution of urban design schools of
thought in N.Y.C. has brought us to a rediscovery of the street as an intre gral
part of the city, as a place for people
and a means to structure: the pattern of
development. The current image of the good
city is somewhat eclectic; the good city
is beautiful, the good city is picturesque,
the good city is intimate, the good city
153
has tree-lined streets, arcades and parks.
Perhaps theories of good city form are
cyclical or perhaps there are some basic
scale, texture, and use considerations
which must be addressed regardless of
what the image of the good city is.
Models of the good city must be viewed in
the context of events which framed the
basic urban questions of their time.
The perspective on the evolution of urban
design ethics in N.Y.C. explored in this
thesis suggest that the definition of the
good city changes with the ability to affect
change, achieve an improved urban setting,
and the evolving questions asked about
and demands made on the urban environment.
There will continue to be changes in city
planning, its critics, and the forces which
influence.
There will continue to be
154
transition periods in the evolution
of urban design philosophy. There will
continue to be the need to rethink and
restate urban design manifestoes in light
of these changes.
155
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156
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33
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Stephen,
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